Contents May Have ShiftedPam Houston320 pages, hardcover: $25.95.W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Pam Houston writes somewhat like a modern-day Jane Austen, although rather than merely dance at the ball, Elizabeth Bennet gets to go backpacking with Mr. Darcy in the San Juans (or perhaps take a trip to Tunisia or Bhutan). Beginning with her […]
Erica Olsen
Posted inAugust 8, 2011: Ganjanomics
A Western mystery with an environmental twist: a review of Buried by the Roan
Buried by the RoanMark Stevens346 pages, softcover: $14.95.People’s Press, 2011. In his second mystery novel, Buried by the Roan, Colorado writer Mark Stevens tells a “ripped from the headlines” story involving natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The story is set in and around the Roan Plateau area between Glenwood Springs and Meeker, […]
Posted inJune 13, 2011: Under the Flight Path
Chronicling a lost river: A review of Dry River
Dry River: Stories of Life, Death, and Redemption on the Santa CruzKen Lamberton288 pages, softcover: $24.95.University of Arizona Press, 2011. In the desert classic The Land of Little Rain (1903), Mary Austin described the Mojave as “a land of lost rivers, with little in it to love; yet a land that once visited must be […]
Posted inAugust 6, 2007: Guns R Us
On the road, and on a date with history
The road trip is a classic American narrative of escape: Huck Finn lighting out for the territory, Jack Kerouac chasing his dreams down the blacktop. In Uncertain Pilgrims, Lenore Carroll gives us a different kind of journey, narrated by Carla Brancato, a young woman from Kansas City who is struggling to get over the death […]
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Elementary, my dear cowpuncher
In his new historical mystery, Holmes on the Range, Steve Hockensmith slyly tips his hat to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose 1887 novella, A Study in Scarlet, introduced Sherlock Holmes to the world. Both books feature a Western theme. In Doyle’s melodramatic tale, a murder in London is linked to the history of Mormon Utah. […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Trading goods, and stories, on the reservation
In the 1920s and ’30s, many Navajo Indians traded for flour and coffee at Will Evans’ Shiprock Trading Company. Among them were survivors of the infamous Long Walk, the 300-mile forced march that sent the tribe into temporary exile in eastern New Mexico in 1864. When yet another battle-scarred Navajo limped into the post, Evans […]
Posted inDecember 20, 2004: Stand Your Ground
An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
Posted inWotr
An artist’s residency, unplugged
The Aspen Guard Station is a log cabin in an aspen grove in the San Juan National Forest, 12 miles north of Mancos in southern Colorado. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the guard station once housed fire crews. Today, the cabin is home to another kind of seasonal worker: writers and […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Las Vegas: Images in light, images in stone
My brother, Karl, tells me the Las Vegas Strip is the only road in the United States that’s a National Scenic Byway after dark. It is scenic, though people tend to snicker when informed of this designation. We’re outside my brother’s apartment on the west side of the city. Karl points downtown, toward the Strip […]