The Seventymile Kid: The Lost Legacy of Harry Karstens and the First Ascent of Mount McKinleyTom Walker304 pages, softcover: $19.95Mountaineers Books, 2013. Many readers know that, 100 years ago, the Hudson Stuck expedition successfully summited Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak. But fewer are aware of the integral role played by the expedition’s most experienced […]
Book Reviews
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
A review of Our Beautiful, Fragile World: The Nature and Environmental Photographs of Peter Essick
Our Beautiful, Fragile World: The Nature and Environmental Photographs of Peter Essick Foreword by Jean-Michel Cousteau, 122 pages, $34.95. Rocky Nook, 2013. “I know that when people see and feel the beauty of the natural world, they understand in a profound way the need to take care of our water planet,” writes Jean-Michel Cousteau, son […]
Posted inNovember 11, 2013: Cosmic Prospecting
A survivor, searching for soul
The Old Man’s Love StoryRudolfo Anaya176 pages, hardcover: $19.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. “Letting go of one’s soul mate is not easy.” So writes award-winning author and retired University of New Mexico professor Rudolfo Anaya in his latest novel, The Old Man’s Love Story. Inspired by the death of his beloved wife, Patricia, in 2010, […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
A review of At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land
At Home in the West: The Lure of Public LandWilliam S. Sutton, with Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer, 200 pages, hardcover: $50. George F. Thompson Publishing, 2013. In the essay that kicks off his beautiful black-and-white photography book, At Home in the West: The Lure of Public Land, William S. Sutton says he began […]
Posted inOctober 28, 2013: Lifeblood of the Delta
Big water, big dreams
The Emerald Mile: the Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand CanyonKevin Fedarko432 pages, hardcover: $30.Scribner, 2013. When did we get so petty? At a time when we’re faced with huge issues – a changing climate, a healthcare crisis, a democracy threatened by money in politics, the legacy […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
A review of Painters and the American West, Vol. 2
Painters and the American West, Vol. IIJoan Carpenter Troccoli, et al.,344 pages, cloth: $80. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. In Painters and the American West, Vol. 2, retired art scholar and museum director Joan Carpenter Troccoli writes about the lives and times of the artists whose works fill the American Museum of Western Art in […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
Is this heaven? No, it’s Idaho
Godforsaken Idaho: StoriesShawn Vestal,209 pages, softcover:$15.95.Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Shawn Vestal sets the stories in his focused yet far-reaching debut collection among regular Mormon folks who live in Idaho, touching on their lives in the past, the present and even the afterworld. Most of his characters have fallen away from their faith or are struggling […]
Posted inOctober 14, 2013: The New Geronimo?
The world of the speed artist
The FlamethrowersRachel Kushner400 pages, hardcover: $26.99.Scribner, 2013. Reno, the 22-year-old protagonist of Rachel Kushner’s second novel, The Flamethrowers, makes her first appearance as she flies across Nevada on her way to Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats in the 1970s. “The land was drained of color and specificity,” she observes. “The faster I went, the more connected […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Learning to bend: Settling Utah’s road wars
Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon CountryJedediah S. Rogers242 pages, hardcover: $39.95.University of Utah Press, 2013. Some fear that we will saddle our children with trillions of dollars in federal debt. That would be too bad, but it would be a minor inconvenience compared to what our forefathers cursed us with: the 1866 federal […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Reconstructing a volatile past
Son of a Gun: A Memoir Justin St. Germain 256 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2013. Murdered in her trailer just days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, sensationalized on TV news, labeled a “black widow” by a marshal — Justin St. Germain’s mother was judged for her lifestyle both in life and in death. […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
The ‘wrong kind of Indians’
Cowboys and East IndiansNina McConigley195 pages, softcover: $15.95.FiveChapters Books, 2013. In her captivating debut story collection, Casper-raised author Nina McConigley examines with wit and empathy what it means to be “the wrong kind of Indians living in Wyoming.” Although prejudice and ignorance surface, there are few bad guys in this game of cowboys and Indians, […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
A puzzle of memory and vision
Boneland: Linked StoriesNance Van Winckel196 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Loss — real and potential — casts a shadow over the lives of the characters in Washington writer Nance Van Winckel’s poignant, deeply interconnected short stories. At the center of the collection is Lynette, who seems as trouble-prone as she is resilient. In […]
Posted inSeptember 16, 2013: Intimate Geographies
Desert solitude, desert community
Brother and the DancerKeenan Norris266 pages, softcover:$15.Heyday Books, 2013. Gang wars, drive-by shootings, drug sales, poverty — San Bernardino County was, as Keenan Norris explains in his debut novel, Brother and the Dancer, “one of the most violent places in America” at the millennium. The area surrounding his hometown of Highland, Calif., he notes ruefully, […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A President in Yellowstone
A President in Yellowstone: The F. Jay Haynes Photographic Album of Chester Arthur’s 1883 Expedition, Frank H. Goodyear III, 192 pages, hardcover: $36.95. University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. No sitting president had traveled so far west before President Chester A. Arthur joined an expedition to Yellowstone National Park in 1883. Frank Jay Haynes, a young […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
A world of hunger and desire
A Guide to Being BornRamona Ausubel195 pages, hardcover, $26.95.Riverhead, 2013. When an innovative style is a writer’s main goal, emotional subtleties tend to fall by the wayside. Ramona Ausubel, raised in New Mexico and now based in California, crafts literary fiction that manages to keep out the chill. The stories in A Guide to Being […]
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Exceptional accounts of the ordinary
Middle Men Jim Gavin240 pages, hardcover: $23. Simon & Schuster, 2013. The stories in Jim Gavin’s debut collection, Middle Men, are darkly comedic accounts of defeat. A second-rate teenage basketball player, a Meals-on-Wheels driver, and a toilet salesman, among others, aspire to reach beyond mediocrity in love and work and play. But failure, that great […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
A review of Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait
Landscape Dreams, A New Mexico portrait photographs by Craig Varjabedian, essays by Marin Sardy, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and Hampton Sides, 140 pages, hardcover: $50, University of New Mexico Press, 2012. Contemporary landscape photography often looks too pristine and over-saturated to feel authentic. But Craig Varjabedian’s monochromatic images of New Mexico transcend that. In place of […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Mourning before departure
The Days Are GodsLiz Stephens206 pages, softcover: $18.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2013. A wistful, at times mournful spirit permeates the 41 brief essays that make up Liz Stephens’ first book, The Days Are Gods. The Oklahoma-born Stephens is a “card-carrying Choctaw tribal member” and recently earned a Ph.D. in creative nonfiction. Her multifaceted memoir is […]
Posted inAugust 19, 2013: Dinosaur Wars
Tools ‘R’ Us
Dirt Work: An Education in the WoodsChristine Byl256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Beacon Press, 2013. Tired of school, broke and eager for a change, Christine Byl took to the woods with a National Park Service trail crew. Through 16 summers of manual labor in Alaska and Montana — maintaining, repairing, designing and building bridges, ditches and trails […]
Posted inAugust 5, 2013: Mojave Squeeze
A review of Animal Crackers
Animal Crackers The Brothers Kraynak 48 pages, softcover: $19.95. The Brothers Kraynak, 2013. animalcrackersbook.wix.com/animal-crackers With its colorful illustrations and hand-lettered look, Animal Crackers resembles a children’s book — until you look more closely and realize it’s far from a soothing bedtime read. The Brothers Kraynak, Scott, a visual artist and park ranger, and his brother, […]