Review of ‘Water to the Angels’ by Les Standiford.
Traci J. Macnamara
Posted inJune 8, 2015: Tree of Life
Grave dangers and satisfying ends
Review of ‘Crow Fair’ by Thomas McGuane.
Posted inNovember 24, 2014: Transportation Transformation
A poetic search for a lost father
Review of ‘Crow Blue’ Adriana Lisboa.
Posted inSeptember 15, 2014: Books & Essays
The bloody, brave beginnings of the Northwest
Review of ‘The Bully of Order’ by Brian Hart.
Posted inJuly 21, 2014: On the Wild Edge
An artist’s road to redemption
The PainterPeter Heller288 pages, hardcover:$24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. If it’s possible to paint in words alone, to create a wildly colorful story of grief in sentences layered like one of van Gogh’s swirling night scenes, Colorado author Peter Heller accomplishes it in his second novel, The Painter, narrated by artist Jim Stegner. A fly fisherman […]
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 inMarch 4, 2013: Uncertain Landing
An unlikely penitent: A review of On Top of Spoon Mountain
On Top of Spoon MountainJohn Nichols232 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of New Mexico Press, 2012. In a career that spans five decades, New Mexico author John Nichols has written more books and screenplays than he can count on his fingers and toes. His first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, was published when he was 23, and The […]
Posted inNovember 26, 2012: Casting for Common Ground
The truths that matter: A review of Truth Like the Sun
In Truth Like the Sun, Washington novelist Jim Lynch straddles two Seattles: the little-known Western town in the 1960s, on the brink of exploding into a world-class city, and the modern Seattle of four decades later, at the height of the dot-com boom. He braids these incarnations of the city into an intricate narrative of […]
Posted inOctober 15, 2012: Are you a local?
Celebrating what remains: A review of The Dog Stars
Award-winning adventure writer Peter Heller sets his debut novel, The Dog Stars, in an apocalypse-stricken Colorado, where Hig, one of the planet’s few survivors, flies around in an antique plane with a dog as his copilot. To this compelling frame, Heller adds adrenaline-pumping adventure, deep philosophical undercurrents … and a bit of love. In the […]
Posted inSeptember 19, 2011: Redemption
No bones about it: two books on the disappearing Everett Ruess
Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness ExplorerDavid Roberts416 pages, hardcover: $25.Broadway, 2011. Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing AfterlifePhilip L. Fradkin296 pages, hardcover: $24.95.University of California Press, 2011. There’s nothing like an unsolved disappearance to create an enduring cult hero. Maybe that’s why Amelia Earhart and […]
Posted inJune 7, 2010: One Tough Sucker
Notes from a Wyoming sheepwagon
Claiming GroundLaura Bell256 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. A pretty minister’s daughter from Kentucky might not be the kind of person you’d expect to find herding sheep in the lonesome expanse of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin. But when Laura Bell graduated from college in 1977, she felt drawn to the nomadic life she’d glimpsed […]
Posted inFebruary 15, 2010: Prodigal Dogs
A dark and disjointed journey
Day out of DaysSam Shepard304 pages, hardcover: $24.95.Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. The short stories in Day out of Days, Sam Shepard’s new collection, have an unhinged, out-there appeal, reflecting their eclectic, mostly Western settings. Some individual stories are even named after their locations: “Williams, Arizona,” for one, and “Cracker Barrel Men’s Room (Highway 90 West).” […]