Sundance: A NovelDavid Fuller352 pages, hardcover: $27.95.Riverhead, 2014. What if an Old West legend left the outlaw life behind to embark on a mission to find his lost love? David Fuller’s second novel recasts the fate of Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known to history and movie fans as the Sundance Kid, who allegedly perished along […]
Karen Rigby
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 19, 2011: Redemption
Survival and opportunism in Butte: A review of The Richest Hill on Earth
The Richest Hill on EarthRichard S. Wheeler320 pages, hardcover: $29.99.Forge, December. In the run-up to an election year, what can the past reveal about public figures and the role they play in shaping business policies? Montana author Richard S. Wheeler’s historical novel The Richest Hill on Earth dramatizes the rivalry between the 19th century “Copper […]
Posted inMay 2, 2011: The Westerner in D.C
An epic tale of the Northwest: A review of West of Here
West of HereJonathan Evison496 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Algonquin Books, 2011. Once home to the Siwash and Klallam tribes, then to frontiersmen and a Utopian community, the fictional town of Port Bonita, Wash., provides a fertile backdrop for Jonathan Evison’s second novel, West of Here. Alternating between the late 19th century and the year 2006, Evison reveals […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2011: Obama and the West
Reasons to persevere
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 […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Stories from the shadow sides
Boys and Girls Like You and MeAryn Kyle225 pages, hardcover: $24.Scribner, 2010. Writer Aryn Kyle, who was raised in Grand Junction, Colo., examines the frontier between childhood and adulthood in 11 stories threaded by themes of solitude and unrest. The characters — precocious girls, a middle-school boy, women caught in adulterous or unstable relationships — […]