The Little BrideAnna Solomon314 pages, softcover: $15. Riverhead, 2011. Anna Solomon’s fascinating first novel The Little Bride begins in Russia in the 1880s, when Minna Losk, a 16-year-old orphan, signs up to become a mail-order bride. After the death of her father, Minna worked for a while as a maid for a once-wealthy woman. Now, […]
Jenny Shank
Posted inDecember 26, 2011: Perilous Passages
Love and loss on a Wyoming ranch: A review of Lime Creek
Lime CreekJoe Henry160 pages, hardcover: $20.Random House, 2011. Woody Creek, Colo.-based Joe Henry studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with John Irving, but then detoured from writing fiction to work as a rancher, becoming a successful lyricist along the way. Henry’s ravishing first work of fiction, Lime Creek, must have been inspired by the Western […]
Posted inNovember 28, 2011: Growing a Revolution
Dealt a bad hand: A review of Doc
Doc Mary Doria Russell 394 pages, hardcover: $26. Random House, 2011. Versatile novelist Mary Doria Rusell’s captivating reimagining of the life of Doc Holliday ends before the 1881 gunfight at the O.K. Corral, that eternal wellspring for Western novels and movies. In her new book, Doc, Russell sees Holliday as more than a gambler and […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
Seeds of atonement: an interview with writer Shann Ray
The short stories in Shann Ray’s first book, American Masculine, reflect his lifelong interest in forgiveness and redemption, as well as in basketball and the American West. Ray’s characters struggle to live up to their families’ expectations and look up to those who are “more ready to give and forgive.” Ray, who grew up in […]