Book Reviews

When the Killing’s DoneT.C. Boyle384 pages, hardcover: $ 26.95.Viking, 2011. One of the West’s most prolific and trenchant novelists returns to a theme he previously explored in Tooth and Claw and A Friend of the Earth: our interactions with nature and their repercussions. T.C. Boyle’s characters often root for the environment. The tension and narrative […]

Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert HomeEllen Waterston144 pages, softcover: $18.95.Oregon State University Press, 2010. In 1973, Ellen Waterston, a New England transplant, and her husband drove into the high desert of eastern Oregon. “In our rundown pickup with Montana plates and a cab-over camper we looked more like evacuees from the Dust […]

Blind Your PoniesStanley Gordon West400 pages, softcover: $14.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. Willow Creek, the Montana town at the heart of Stanley Gordon West’s new novel, Blind Your Ponies, is home to the Broncos, a high school basketball team on a losing streak. It’s also a way station for adults escaping their pasts, and the basketball team’s […]

The Book of JohnKate Niles225 pages, softcover: $22.85.O Books, 2010. John Gregory Wayne Thompson, the eponymous hero of Kate Niles’ second novel, The Book of John, moves between the southwest Colorado desert and the cold beaches of Washington’s Neah Bay, in the process retracing his personal life and loves. An archaeologist, John is 50 years […]

Breaking into the BackcountrySteve Edwards192 pages, softcover: $16.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2010. “In the seven months I spent in the backcountry, in relative solitude, I rarely felt as alone as I do sitting at this table,” writes Steve Edwards, describing his return to the family dining room after a lengthy sojourn by Oregon’s Rogue River. […]

The Long Slide Blair Oliver and Peter Soliunas 200 pages, softcover: $20. World Audience, Inc., 2010. The first collaboration from authors Peter Soliunas and Blair Oliver, The Long Slide is at once a pulpy romp across the Rockies and a mash note to the works of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. But where those authors […]

Matter Journal 13: Edward AbbeyVarious contributors432 pages, softcover: $17.Wolverine Farm Publishing, 2010. The problem with dead authors is that no more work will be forthcoming from them. Without new material to sink their teeth into, both fans and critics of Edward Abbey have long resorted to “secondary sources” — interviews with the curmudgeon’s friends, vintage […]

Raw Edges: A MemoirPhyllis Barber280 pages, hardcover: $26.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010. All memoirs risk provoking the reader’s question: What’s so important about your life, anyway? Why should we bother to read a whole book about it? Nevada author Phyllis Barber tries to answer that question in her second autobiography, Raw Edges: “While this search […]

From the HilltopToni Jensen179 pages, softcover: $19.95.University of Nebraska Press, 2010. In From the Hilltop, her first short story collection, Toni Jensen relies on her Métis heritage (a mixed Indian and European cultural group from Canada and the Northern U.S.) to explore contemporary Indian life off the reservation. It is not surprising that her writing […]

Walking Home: A Traveler in the Alaskan Wilderness, a Journey into the Human HeartLynn Schooler272 pages, hardcover: $25.Bloomsbury, 2010. Hoping to gain perspective on his troubled marriage, the deaths of friends, and the vagaries of male middle age, Lynn Schooler (author of The Blue Bear) embarks on a walkabout along one of the wildest stretches […]

Work SongIvan Doig288 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Riverhead Books, 2010. “My train journey had brought me across the Montana everyone thinks of, mile upon hypnotic mile of rolling prairie with snowcapped peaks in the distance, and here, as sudden and surprising as a lost city of legendary times, was a metropolis of nowhere. …” In his latest […]

Driving on the RimThomas McGuane320 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Knopf, October. It’s a bit like finessing the knots out of tangled fishing line or fitting numbers into a Sudoku puzzle: Your goal is to see the whole thing in its proper order. But that’s just one reason to keep reading to the end of Driving on the […]

Cities and Nature in the American WestEdited by Char Miller288 pages, softcover: $34.95.University of Nevada Press, 2010. In Cities and Nature in the American West, leading environmental historians dissect the relationship between the region’s urban areas and the landscapes in which they are set. In the introductory essay, editor Char Miller, director of the environmental […]

The Turquoise Ledge: A MemoirLeslie Marmon Silko336 pages, hardcover: $25.95.Viking, October. The big arroyo has no attachment to the way things are. The arroyo is the space the water and the boulders and other debris pass through in floods, the space that desert animals and I move through. The space that is the arroyo changes […]

The Etiquette of Freedom: Gary Snyder, Jim Harrison and The Practice of the WildEdited by Paul Ebenkamp160 pages, hardcover/DVD: $28.Counterpoint, October 2010. Bird CloudAnnie Proulx256 pages, hardcover: $26. Scribner, January 2011. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning Western authors have books coming out in the next few months. Both Annie Proulx and Gary Snyder are taking stock these […]