Average customer rating:
- Suspenseful but Predictable
- Easy and entertaining in a soap-opera type of way
- Story really dragged - not her best work
- Angels Fall was just ok...
- Most Predictable Book I've Ever Read
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Angels Fall
Nora Roberts
Manufacturer: G. P. Putnam's Sons
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Ricochet: A Novel
ASIN: 0399153721 |
Book Description
Reece Gilmore has come a long way to see the stunning view below her. As the sole survivor of a brutal crime back East, she has been on the run, desperately fighting the nightmares and panic attacks that haunt her. Reece settles in Angel's Fist, Wyoming - temporarily, at least-and takes a job at a local diner. And now she's hiked this mountain all by herself. It was glorious, she thought, as she peered through her binoculars at the Snake River churning below.
Then Reece saw the man and woman on the opposite bank. Arguing. Fighting. And suddenly, the man was on top of the woman, his hands around her throat . . .
Enjoying a moment of solitude a bit farther down the trail is a gruff loner named Brody. But by the time Reece reaches him and brings him to the scene, the pair has vanished. When authorities comb the area where she saw the attack, they find nothing.No signs of struggle. No freshly turned earth. Not even a tire track.
And no one in Angel's Fist seems to believe her. After all, she's a newcomer in town, with a reputation for being jumpy and jittery-maybe even a little fragile. Maybe it's time to run again, to move on . . .
Reece Gilmore knows there's a killer in Angel's Fist, even if Brody, despite his seeming impatience and desire to keep her at arm's length, is the only one willing to believe her. When a series of menacing events makes it clear that someone wants her out of the way, Reece must put her trust in Brody-and herself-to find out if there is a killer in Angel's Fist before it's too late.
Customer Reviews:
Suspenseful but Predictable.......2007-10-14
This is my first Nora Roberts book and most likely not my last. While the mystery plot was pretty transparant and the romantic connection predictable, when the end came, it came too fast. Yes, the obvious was wrapped up but there's a whole other book waiting to be written....one where Joanie is the central character. She held my attention; had the spit, fire and no nonsense approach to life that the shrinking violets of this genre lack.
Please do a sequel to this book and expand Joanie's life. Was there really a suicide in her cabin? Why does she present as a no-nonense, rough as sandpaper character? Plenty of background to work with which could be explored further when she and Reece open the Casual Gormet. Looking forward to more with Joanie as the central character.
Easy and entertaining in a soap-opera type of way.......2007-10-06
Angels Fall is not going to help you broaden your literature horizons but it will be entertaining, if you're looking for a simple book to keep you busy. The book is well written, I've never read any of Nora Roberts books before but I was impressed.
The story in a nutshell is about a woman who moves to a small town from the big city because of a personal tragedy. She leaves behind all of her belongings, friends, and family and decides to live in this particular small Wyoming town. As with most small towns, everyone knows everyone and every body's business. So when this young, attractive, and mysterious woman coming to their town everyone has their eyes on her every move.
She ends up witnessing a murder but when the police investigate, there is no evidence of any crime or altercation. Therefore, she must be crazy. The story springs from there and the ending is a fun twist. The story does have a muted love story in the middle of the mystery, which I like, so all in all it was a good book.
I would recommend it to anyone who likes mysteries and for anyone who is looking for a book that you don't want to think too much when your reading it. Despite the fact that there is a murder in the book, the book is light and easy. Give it a try!
Story really dragged - not her best work.......2007-09-29
(Review by Bob's wife, Kathy) I love Nora Roberts' books. I've read almost all of them. And just like with any author I've read a lot of, I know her writing voice. I know what kind of heroes and heroines she favors.
But still...
Angel's Fall was *too* predictable for me. I could tell what was going on in her apartment immediately. Who couldn't? And it didn't take but one sentence, early on, for me to figure out who the murderer was. In fact, it was so obvious, so annoying to know, that I skipped to the end to see if I was right. Yep, I was. This is something that I very rarely ever do when reading a mystery. Mystery solved, I could find no reason to read the rest of the book. The "love" story was predictable and the characters annoying. The whole thing just dragged and dragged.
If you are new to Nora, pick another book to start with. If you are an old Nora fan like I am, make this one a library pick.
Sorry, Ms. Roberts. I can easily think of half a dozen books of yours that are my favorites. This one, however, made me think you need to take a break and go on vacation for a few weeks...get a change of scenery and some new ideas! It happens to all of us.
Angels Fall was just ok..........2007-09-03
I have to say I was disappointed in Angels Fall. I've read other Nora Roberts (and J.D. Robb) books and in comparison, this one really dragged; I had to fight my way through to finish it. The suspense picked up when they found who the murdered woman was and started to put the pieces together. Overall, rather predictable and not so exciting. I'm glad to be finished with this one...
Most Predictable Book I've Ever Read.......2007-08-09
This book was so predictable. I knew who the killer was half way through the book. The characters were good, thats about it. It's not a good suspense novel.
Book Description
Wild, spectacular Yellowstone thrills visitors with gushing geysers and free-roaming wildlife. Grand Teton entices with jagged peaks and glacial lakes. Packed with information for everyone from families with small children to hardcore outdoor adventurers, this guide takes you there.
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Thermal Wonders: From world-famous Old Faithful to gem-colored hot springs, Yellowstone's wild thermal features.
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Wildlife: Bison, elk, bears, moose, wolves, bald eagles - this guide tells you where to spot them.
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Outdoor Fun: The best spots for hiking, camping, rock-climbing, skiing, fishing, boating, and more.
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Insider Tips: Hundreds of places to stay, eat, and play, as well as how to find a wealth of hidden treasures.
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Beyond the Parks: From the Wild West bluster of Cody to the exhilarating ski slopes of Jackson Hole.
Customer Reviews:
Most helpful guidebook.......2007-09-11
Before my Yellowstone trip, I had purchased many books and maps and visited websites-you know the drill. This book helped with many insider tips-when talking with other visitors, they had consistently asked me how I knew these things, and I told them-the Lonely Planet guide. Even two park rangers wanted to know how I knew these lesser known tips-and they were impressed with the information. My favorites: how to get the best view of the Grand Prismatic pool (I'm not going to give that one away) and how to avoid bears on trails-which I'll let out of the bag-sing show tunes! Yes that sounds ridiculous-but when I saw a bear about 150 ft ahead of me on a trail and started singing Ethel Merman, well, bears are smart enough not to stick around for the encore!
Not The Lonely Planet I've Come to Expect!.......2007-06-15
Maybe it's because the author admits that he ventured off to complete this project only a couple days after getting married, leaving his bride behind. Perhaps a publishing deadline loomed large. I'm not sure what Lonely Planet's excuse is, but this book is the most thrown together, unhelpful guide I've ever seen in their repertoire! I've appreciated their "secret" tips and organized guides for many of my world adventures, and this one is just way below par. Abyssmal on any scale.
I did tons better researching on the internet on my own, which might be the best approach to these parks anyway, so that you're sure to get up to date information. This guide doesn't even mention the great guest ranch outside the park at which I snagged six nights a few months before my visit, how to make sure that you get tickets for special ranger-led, half-day back-country adventure hikes with 15 person limits, or that there are boat and kayak rentals/tours in Yellowstone from concessionaires.
The book literally gives you a headache, trying to figure out how to make sense of the vast amount of listings presented. A menage of maps and thrown-together tidbits are pretty meaningless without the necessary organization to figure out an orderly travel plan. It would have been a lot better if the book took you around each of Yellowstone's loops and through Grand Teton in a more logical format.
I alos found much of the information to be grossly outdated and inaccurate, and so many basic outdoor activities weren't explored in depth, and no real useful information or how-tos were given. I was thoroughly disappointed with my selection. With the vast amount of knowledge that I've accumulated through my own research, I could certainly re-write this guide myself!
You'll be lost without it!.......2006-10-15
If it's your first time in Yellow Stone or the Grand Tetons this'll be your bible .. the hikes listed in both places are well presented and with the maps included will help you plan you time in this wonderful part of the world .. The information on where you are likely to spot animals is really useful - Elk, Bison, Moose and Bear ... all accurate! The highlights and intineraries suggested helped with planning the trip .. but in addition to the traditional 'must sees' the book also suggests some wonderful off the beaten track experiences as well. Has info on where to stay and eat ..I stayed outside the park and would recommend either Teton Village or Jackson Hole as a good base with lots of top class accomodation. For European travellers Jackson Hole was the only place that I could get a mobile phone signal!
A Guide To the Tetons and Yellowstone.......2005-10-26
For one contemplating a trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons this book will be a fine handbook and guide.It is very detailed in regards to information about the parks and offers the reader a fine source of information for things to do on your visit.
As a backup source.......2005-10-06
For general planning of our trip, this book provided some useful information but the book does not give enough detail for a day to day planner.
Book Description
Frommer's Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks is packed with all the facts, tips and descriptions you need to have perfect park.
Personally researched and meticulously updated, our author will guide you to the parks' most memorable experiences, from Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs, to Snake River rafting, and the most off-beat experiences from ranger-led interpretive walks to challenging backcountry overnights. Frommer's Yellowstone & Grand Teton also covers the attractions and dining near the parks: rodeos, chuckwagon feeds, IMAX nature films, an elk preserve, Jackson Hole’s bars and boutiques, and more. Get the low-down on all the best places to stay in and near the parks, ranging from historic lodges to family-friendly motels—plus a complete campground guide for each park. Also included are a fully illustrated nature guide and accurate park and trail maps, all in a pocket size guide!
Customer Reviews:
Not What I Expected.......2007-07-07
This book was not what I expected - I would not recommend it at all. It stayed in the car packed away. I also bought Scenic Driving Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, 2nd (Scenic Driving Series) and Outdoor Family Guide to Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks (Outdoor Family Guides) which were excellent.
We used a different guide.......2007-05-15
We bought this book, but ended up using other guides. It is a fine reference for some people, but I'd recommend:
Yellowstone Treasures: The Traveler's Companion to the National Park (Great for more in-depth research)
and
National Geographic Road Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (NG Road Guides) (Quick roadside reference)
instead.
Excellent guide with great suggestions.......2006-11-29
My family went to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks last June and this guide was a great resource. At the moment, I'm planning another national park trip and pulled the book off the shelf so I could get a guide by the same author.
He marked Signal Mountain Lodge in GT as a "** find" and was it ever! It's managed by a different vendor than the other lodges in the park and I'd stay there again if I return. I used his suggestions for "If you can only go on one hike, do this..." and the suggestions were awesome. The hike to the top of Signal Mountain (most people drive rather than take the 6 mile easy walk) was so beautiful and peaceful that I hiked it a second time before leaving.
This book gave suggestions that you'd expect to get from a friend who has just visited an area and says "Hey let me give you this great tip."
I would definitely recommend this book.
The info that was not there.......2006-09-25
I`ve always heard these were good books , after I purchased this I found I must have been lied to. I`ll never buy another Frommer`s anything.
Great All-Around Reference Manual.......2006-06-28
We just got back from our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks (wonderful, wonderful, wonderful!). This book was GREAT! Everything stated was right on the money, and we loved the compactness of it. It was easy to just throw in a backpack or carry-on. We also liked how the book was set up. It was easy to understand and to navigate. If you're looking for a good general overall book, this is the one for you.
Along with this book, we also purchased the Outdoor Family Guide to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park - it gave a really good and comprehensive explaination of the hikes found in each of the parks.
Recommendation: Don't be turned off by the idea of eating in a "cafeteria" within the park. We tried them twice while on vacation (both in Yellowstone) and were pleasantly surprised. The food was reasonable and quite good! The diningrooms were really nice as well - the one at Old Faithful overlooks the geyser!
If visiting the town of Jackson (which was a bit too riff-raffy for us), check out the Snake River Brewery. The food was reasonable and very good, the beer and service excellent and the best part - no line! Due to it being located "off the beaten track" a bit, though easily within walking distance from the town square, it doesn't get visited by a lot of tourists. If traveling with children (like us), try sitting upstairs. They have some old video games like Astoids and Pacman which allowed us to enjoy our meal and relax while the kids played the games.
Amazon.com
With the very first sentence of the first story in this remarkable collection, Annie Proulx demonstrates what makes her great: images sharp as paper cuts conveyed in language so imaginative and compressed it's just this side of poetry; a sense of character so specific it takes only a sentence to establish a whole life; and the underlying promise of something utterly unexpected waiting just up ahead.
In the long unfurling of his life, from tight-wound kid hustler in a wool suit riding the train out of Cheyenne to geriatric limper in this spooled-out year, Mero had kicked down thoughts of the place where he began, a so-called ranch on strange ground at the south hinge of the Big Horns.
"The Half-Skinned Steer" chronicles elderly Mero Corn's journey back to Wyoming for his brother's funeral. As he drives west, details of his eventful trip are interspersed with recollections of his youth on the ranch--most notably a tall tale he heard told long ago about a sad-sack rancher named Tin Head and a butchered steer. This is vintage Proulx, a combination of isolated landscapes, macabre events, and damaged people that adds up, in the end, to a near-perfect story. It's no surprise that "The Half-Skinned Steer" made it into John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century.
Proulx achieves similar results with many of the other stories in Close Range, including another prizewinner, "Brokeback Mountain," the bittersweet story of doomed love between two cowboys who "can't hardly be decent together," yet know "if we do that in the wrong place we'll be dead." But Proulx is careful to add some leavening to the mix. In "The Blood Bay" she indulges her taste for the gruesome with a morbidly amusing retelling of an Old West shaggy-dog story, while "Pair a Spurs" is the sad-funny rendering of divorce, Wyoming style. The author is a true original in every sense of the word, and her evocation of the West is as singular and surprising as that of Cormac McCarthy or Ivan Doig. Close Range is Proulx at her best. --Alix Wilber
Amazon.com Audiobook Review
Pulitzer Prize-winner E. Annie Proulx forays through the underside of America's beloved Wild West in Close Range, a collection of stories about hardship and more hardship in Wyoming territory. Understanding that the West's infinite spaces tended to inspire neither introspection nor contemplation, but a violent and insatiable restlessness, Proulx's eight stories are dark reflections on the lives of a handful of characters striving to define themselves against the unforgiving landscapes. The three professional actors chosen to read the text give strong, resounding interpretations of the macabre tales. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --Natasha Senjanovich
Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time.
Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace.
These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent -- by an author writing at the peak of her craft.
Customer Reviews:
I really like Proulx's prose.......2007-10-02
I took this book and Into the Wild by Krakauer with me on a 3 day backpacking trip in the mountains. Read Proulx.
Proulx's prose is a great engine with horses to spare!.......2007-08-25
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Shipping News and known for vigorous mercurial prose, Annie Proulx takes readers on a journey of speed and destiny in Close Range. Her ability to uncover and dissipate the dead waters of American culture, providing a rich love of character and story in the process, is replete with momentum and artistry. Her stories burn like bonfires in the darkness of a vast literary plain.
'Brokeback Mountain' and then some.......2007-08-13
Annie Proulx supplies interesting subjectivity in extreme and/or interesting environments. Initially reader response to her work was favorable. Recently critical response seem to have fallen, (every interesting new writer cannot remain a new writer forever), but encountering this collection the reader is struck immediately by the liveliness of the writing. One knows that the anticipated enjoyment will pan out.
Does a son go to a bullriding school in California just to spite his mother? She feels that, with all of her hard work of raising him, betrayed. Two years later Diamond sits with his younger brother at the kitchen table. He tells his younger brother rodeo is like a magic show.
A man works on the range near Laramie. He saves. Next he sends for his family. He stakes a homestead claim. The Tinsleys are less lucky than the Dunmires. There is some terrible misery in store for the Tinsleys.
Aladdin has three children. One, an overweight girl, stays home and works on the ranch. She thinks the tractor is speaking. She marries the son of the cattle dealer. Aladdin crashes his new plane.
Someone asserts that half of the hands in Wyoming are women. Bison, it seems, are half the trouble of cattle. Later the lands are sold. It is supposed to revert to the state of nature. Someone runs a lodge for Japanese tourists.
'Brokeback Mountain' is in this collection. Ennis and Jack have signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment. They are herder and camp tender near Signal. The summer range is National Forest land on Brokeback Mountain. Yes, indeed, the story has cinematic features.
Proulx is unique.
Home On the Range.......2007-07-05
You have to hand it to Larry McMurtry for having seen the potential in this little story which did nothing for me when I read it. It goes to show that reading itself is a talent, not to mention writing. I found this a rather thin read, never anticipating its extraordinary visual or dramatic possibilities. It is a text book case of the art of adaptation. Proulx has expressed her satisfaction with the film version, saying that she felt that it had been translated unchanged to the screen with just a few minor changes. The film, of course, is gorgeous. Here I found the prose as thin as that mid-western air. Still, McMurtry saw it all, bought the rights, and the rest is history.
Proulx has a way with Words.......2007-05-06
I found Proulx's interpretation of Wyoming ranching life as harsh, grim, stark, disturbing. It's as if Wyoming was left to nature alone - not much influence from "civilization." Her writing is in a word: FLAWLESS. She is one of those folks who can offer a man's whole life story in a sentence or two - with out really missing anything. Truly a gifted writer. I love her style, though the stories were often heartbreaking and grey. In fact, I could not picture any of the stories in color - they were all shades of sepia and grey. On an odd note, Proulx really is a funny one about characters' monikers. A super quick read, but lasting characters.
Book Description
The most complete guide to the Cowboy State in print. 129 maps, 60 maps of towns and cities, over 1,100 restaurants, over 550 motels, every public and private campground, over 200 guest ranches and resorts, over 130 bed and breakfasts, vacation homes and cabins, over 200 outfitters and guides, airports, more than 270 fisheries, 100s of National Trail points of interest, 49 public golf courses, 100s of museums and historical sites, hot springs, hikes, over 65 scenic drives and side trips, more than 50 ghost towns, downhill and cross country ski areas, gas stops, hundreds of attractions, 1,000s of photographs, weather information for over 60 locations, information on every city and town, 1,000s of things to do, 1,000s of addresses and phone numbers. Complete sections with maps for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and Fort Laramie National Historic Site. Includes free photo CD-ROM of 100s of screensaver sized photos.
Customer Reviews:
Wyoming Why?.......2007-08-23
Bought this book for a recent trip from Boulder, CO to Yellowstone. Thought I would want to find something to look at along the way. There is nothing there.
Ok, almost nothing. There was a nice Thai restaurant in Rawlins, which we found by driving around in Rawlins, but that is pretty much it between the entrance to Grand Teton park and the Colorado border.
The Grand Tetons, Jackson, and Yellowstone are great. The red rock vistas are pretty. But there is nothing worth seeing on the way.
So, if you are visiting those parks in the west, get some books on those, but don't bother with this.
Good Resource for travelers.......2006-11-04
This book is filled with lots of information that will be useful to our many visitors.
The only guide to Wyoming you'll need.......2006-04-11
I shall be visiting Wyoming later this year, and this book (and its accompanying website) has proved to be invaluable in planning my trip. Everything you'll ever need to know about the state is here - maps, accommodation, restaurants, shopping and much more. I particularly like the detailed histories of the various Wyoming towns that are included - not something that you'll find in the usual guide books.
I'd definitely recommend this book to anybody planning to visit Wyoming, and even if you're not planning a visit but are just interested in the state it is still well worth reading.
A Very Helpful Travel Guide.......2006-03-05
This book has all the information you could possibly need if you were travelling to Wyoming and my husband is thrilled we bought it. The maps inside are great, but since we prefer the larger ones, we will get them for free from the Wyoming visitor's bureau. If you're travelling to Wyoming, this is a definite must have and a one-stop source for all your information and travel needs.
ultimate wyoming atlas and travel encyclopedia.......2006-03-03
This book does have a lot of information. I was hoping to find out what each town was like today, not back in the 1800's. I was interested in finding out what each town offered as far as shopping, schools, hospitals, etc... Instead it is more of a history lesson.
Book Description
Technical climbing, hiking and peack bagging routes are described and mapped for this outdoor playground in Wyoming.
Customer Reviews:
Mountaineering Book for more than just Mountaineers.......2003-07-22
I bought this book to plan a week-long backpacking trip. It is very similar in concept to Secor's "High Sierra" guide for CA's Sierra Nevada: Adequate description of the trails and off-trail passes, and comprehensive information for climbers on about everything climbable. I am not a technical climber and cannot judge the book's usefulness as a real "climbing guide", but I like to take off-trail excursions, shortcuts, and scrambles. Together with the "Earthwalk" topos (which are excellent) this book was just the right thing for planning a backpacking trip with "side adventures". If you stay strictly on the trail, you might find a pure trail guide more useful, as trail descriptions only make up 10 or 20% of the text. Off-trail travel turned out to be easy in the Wind Rivers, though.
The book has a short and very interesting account of the history of Wind River exploration.
Awesome guide for the experienced mountaineer.......2002-08-08
This book outlines hundreds of different routes up all of the Wind's well-known peaks (as well as several not-so-well-know ones). He did a phenomenal job amassing all of this information. There is enough here for a short lifetime of awesome mountain trekking.
The information Kelsey gives is mean, lean, and straight to the point. Novices beware, this book makes no attempts to come down to anyone's level. It is written for those grounded in that arts of route-finding, technical climbing, and alpine survival. It is not a hiking book. If you are uncomfortable with this, either buy a more toned-down Wind River guide, or pick up a book to build your skills like "Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills" and start psyching yourself up for some world class backcountry.
A must for the Wind River hiker and mountaineer.......1998-06-07
Joe Kelsey has taken the old trail book of Finis Mitchell's and turned it into a Trail and Mountain Guide that leads you to every nook and crany, you would want to go.
Many years before Joe's book, I would hike the Winds with Mitchells book in hand as if I was following an old adventurers pencil notebook. Today, Joe Kelsey's "Wind River Hiking/Climbing Guide" is as necessary as the matches.
Average customer rating:
- Loneliness and Abandonment
- So Well Drawn
- more than five stars
- Horses' Hearts
- Good writing but I don't "get" where the author's coming from
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Where Rivers Change Direction
Mark Spragg
Manufacturer: Riverhead Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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The Fruit of Stone
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An Unfinished Life
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The Meadow
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The Tie That Binds
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Fencing the Sky
ASIN: 1573228257
Release Date: 2000-08-08 |
Amazon.com
Growing up in rural Wyoming, Mark Spragg learned early to read the stars. At 11 he was instructed to quit dreaming, and he went to work for his father on the land. "I was paid thirty dollars a month, had my own bed in the bunkhouse, and three large, plain meals each day." The ranch is a sprawling place where winter brings months of solitude and summer brings tourists from the real world--city types who want a taste of the outdoors and stare at the author and his family as if they were members of some exotic tribe: "Our guests were New Jersey gas station owners, New York congressmen, Iowa farmers, judges, actors, plumbers, Europeans who had read of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull and came to experience the American West, the retired, the just beginning." By the age of 14, he and his younger brother are leading them on camping trips into deep woods. "No one ever asked why we had no televisions, no daily paper. They came for what my brother and I took for granted. They came to live the anachronism that we considered our normal lives."
As Spragg comes to realize the strangeness of his life, he also detects flaws in his own character--a fear of suffering and mortality that first shows itself when he rides a sick horse too hard, until the animal hovers at the brink of death. He knows that if he had faced the possibility of sickness, if he had been brave, this animal would not have declined so quickly. Throughout his life, this inability to face death, this terror of losing the beauty of the world he so passionately witnesses, drives Spragg to distraction.
Where Rivers Change Direction combines a soaring spirituality with a visceral, often stomach-churning attention to detail. It's a book that continually dares the reader to turn away from its pages in an effort to digest the power of its confused emotions and hauntingly spare images (a "moon-fried plain," a stillborn child "baked alive in my mother's body"). Like Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, Mark Spragg's memoir makes you feel you've been somewhere, you've been out in the depths, and you've come back changed. --Emily White
Book Description
"I knew the horses as I knew my family...When I was separated from them I felt wrong in the world. When I was separated from them I took no comfort in the sound of the creek. I felt chilled without the heat of them. In the short lulls between rides I leaned against the corrals, watching them roil like some captured pod of smallish whales, multi-colored, snorting at their handicapped buoyancy. When I stepped in among them, they would turn to me, roll their eyes until the whites showed, flick their ears. They were used to the sight and sound of me. I was the boy who straddled their hearts."
If the West had a voice this is how it would sound. Passionate. Unequivocal. In the tradition of Ivan Doig's THIS HOUSE OF SKY, Mark Spragg's stunning collection, WHERE RIVERS CHANGE DIRECTION, renders an unforgettable story of an adolescence spent on the oldest dude ranch in Wyoming-a remote spread on the Shoshone National Forest, the largest block of unfenced wilderness in the lower forty-eight states.
In this sublime and unforgiving landscape, Spragg's distant and mercurial father, his emotionally isolated but resilient mother, his fierce and devoted younger brother Rick, and his mentor, a wry and wise cowboy named John, cleave to one another and to the harsh life they have chosen. Unrelenting winds, pitiless blizzards, muscular rivers--from these elements Spragg divines the universal yearnings for self-reliance, trust, acceptance, and love. WHERE RIVERS CHANGE DIRECTION illuminates the unexpected wisdom and irrevocable truth embedded in the small, but profound dramas of one boy's journey toward manhood.
Customer Reviews:
Loneliness and Abandonment.......2007-10-14
These are two feelings I got from reading this memoir. Life in NW Wyoming is not easy. Days are spent with horses and one's life is taken by horses. In fact, if you love horses this is a great book.
One thing that kept creeping into this book is the distance the author had toward his parents, especially his father. Little but dialogue is written about the father, but he comes across as callous and more worried of turning the boy into a real man. The boy, in turn, writes about his concerns about the man he will become. At times that dragged on too much.
Still, it's wonderful prose written in a manly tone. For rugged cowboys and ranchers it's a perfect read.
So Well Drawn.......2007-08-23
What an unrelentingly gripping series of stories -- life, death, animals, boys, girls, men, women, horses, snakes, water, wind, earth, blood, fire and sky. Mark Spragg's style is a bit like David Hockney doing his photograph collages. He doesn't show you everything, just bits and pieces to make the whole. He lets you put some of the pieces in place. What a style. It's shot through with his own strong character and some compelling scenes of raw Wyoming life. The stories follow an amazing arc that you don't see coming until the last chapter and then you just kind of want to start all over again, and meet the boy that became the man. Beautiful stuff. Look, I'm not really out here trying to sell my book at every corner but the people who told me about Mark Spragg are readers of my book, "Antler Dust." I had three recommendations from "Antler Dust" readers to check out Mark Spragg, mostly because, I believe, of the detailed outdoors action and the fact that my book takes place in a neighboring state, Colorado. I am going to read more Mark Spragg but for others who like him, please also consider Antler Dust.
more than five stars.......2007-07-27
I'd worry about peope who don't hurt themselves laughing while reading Wapiti School. My goodness, these stories are terrific, sometimes tough and bitter, sometimes perfect poetry. Just wonderful.
Horses' Hearts .......2007-05-23
Mark Spragg writes beautifully, even poetically, of teenage life in a Wyoming family struggling to make ends meet by catering to "dudes" come West for the seasonal fishing and hunting. His collection of stories is varied, but all are tied to the splendor of unshod love for the land and for the horses he rides through a journey that will steal your heart.
Good writing but I don't "get" where the author's coming from.......2007-05-07
The author writes excellent prose with innumerable well turned phrases and descriptions. The subject matter is primarily his adolescence on a Wyoming dude ranch and hunting guide service that his family, Pennsylvania expatriates, operated in the 1960s, some vignettes from his adult life and descriptions of friends and conditions in windswept Wyoming. The chapters are actually a series of essays rather than a progressive narrative with the ones about life and work on and around his father's ranch, where he essentially lived as a hired hand in the bunkhouse with hardened wranglers from about the age of fourteen, being the most interesting.
I enjoyed the book principally due to the excellent writing and colorful recounting of the author's experiences as a real "cowboy" in an era when most of us male baby boomers only experienced the same thing through ubiquitous western TV shows and movies of the 50s and 60s. It was a life in another era when so many of us grew up in boring suburbia. I recommend it for these reasons.
But maybe I missed something because I never came across any explanation for the author's seeming sense of hurt, isolation, melancholy and general unhappiness that begins, for unstated reasons, during his college years.
Amazon.com
"Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are. We are often like rivers: careless and forceful, timid and dangerous, lucid and muddied, eddying, gleaming, still." Whether she's reflecting on nature's teachings, divulging her experiences as a cowpuncher, or painting vivid word portraits of the people she lives and works with, Gretel Ehrlich's observations are lyrical and funny, wise and authentic. After moving from the city to a vast new state, she writes of adjusting to cowboy life, boundless open spaces, and the almost incomprehensible harshness of a Wyoming winter:
"When it's fifty below, the mercury bottoms out and jiggles there as if laughing at those of us still above ground. Once I caught myself on tiptoes, peering down into the thermometer as if there were an extension inside inscribed with higher and higher declarations of physical misery: ninety below to the power of ten and so on."
After experiencing the isolated life of a sheep herder, she writes, "Keenly observed the world is transformed. The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient."
Ehrlich's gift is one of subtle precision. She writes beauty into the plainest of thoughts and meaning into the simplest of ideas: "True solace is finding none, which is to say, it is everywhere." --Kathryn True
Customer Reviews:
Drifter's Escape.......2007-02-15
I have to confess that part of my enthusiasm for this volume resides in the fact that Erlich's poetic leanings summon similar images from my rural surrounds, unlikely as the thought may be of Central Australia's arid bush from Wyoming high country. Her slim volume, polished from journal observations, realises her hopes to make authentic art with parallel qualities of earth:'weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; winds would sweep away obtuse padding'. Her hold over this reader slackens after her marriage, as if the budding sexual tension gave to her writing, her observations, a newcomer's keeness of perception. Of course these don't suddenly disappear after consummation. Something in the rythym of the construction weakens; the warp and weft between perceptions of elements, the gossip, the events, the researched historical passages that inform the present. I haven't followed Erlich's career. Annie Proulx's,'Close Range', in the sense I'd prefer, has, assuming the deft observational writing with more expanded takes on her characters that the 'solace of open space' has ellicited. The Erlich book is a tonic for jaded urban spirits and confirmation that the elemntal life can regenerate a metaphoral attitude.
A chiseled paean to the high plains of Wyoming.......2006-02-16
Outsiders (Easterners, city types) are generally disoriented by Wyoming upon first encountering it. 99% of them probably equate the place with the far side of the moon and hope they never have to return. Ehrlich is one of the remaining 1% who came to Wyoming from "outside" and fell in love with it enough to move there permanently (I put myself in the same category though I haven't moved there - yet). In this book, actually a series of short essays, she tries to capture the allure of the place for her readers. She writes about the land, of course, and the weather, but also about the people who "are strong on scruples but tenderhearted about quirky behavior." Much of her time is occupied with sheepherding, something she describes as "a slow, steady trot of keenness with no speed." Ranch life, living on land short of water, and winter, which "laminates the earth with white, then hardens the lacquer work with wind" - all come under her scrutiny. She describes a rodeo which she thinks must only make sense to a rancher. Like Wyoming itself, it's a tough though gentle book, unsentimental and honest. An excellent book.
Surprises.......2004-12-18
This little collection of prose is surprising. A reviewer who didn't care for this book mentioned that it didn't do much to develop or push its theme forward. I think that description is accurate, but misses the point: the book, like its subject matter (Wyoming, mostly, NOT Montana), defies being pushed in any direction. It has a way of imposing itself upon the reader. The vividness of phrase dominates the imagination, but the place it brings you to is an open space, where you're only supposed to linger, discovering and uncovering little surprises of detail as they arrive. It is a wonderful experience and highly recommended, though with a warning: you must be prepared to wander a bit and fall into a different rythm, with different rules, for at least a little while.
Well Written.......2004-11-22
I first read this book when i was a junior in college. It was my last block of the year. When i first though of Nature Writing i think of Transcendentalism with Thoreau and Emerson. Though this book among others changed my mind.
Ehrlich writes of living in Montana and during cattle drives. The details of life in the far west are great. The descriptions of what cow hands do with a years worth of money still, by blowing it on booze and fun it great. The book can be slow at times, yet I feel that this is deliberate in that cattle herding can be slow. In some ways the books is evenly paced. When she talks about the reasons for going to Montana to live there for a time one has to wonder if you, yourself, could do that. I know that for me the answer would be no.
This book is for anyone who likes reading about American Nature Writers.
A love affair with Wyoming.......2003-09-22
Gretel Erlich was a poet and filmmaker when she first came to Wyoming in 1976. She was so taken with everything about the place that she became a cowherd, which gave her time to write about the American West. Reading her books, however, is very much like seeing a film, for her filmmaker's eye and awareness of nuance and gesture is evident in the way she chooses her words.
In The Solace of Open Spaces, Erlich presents us with an eclectic bunch of frontier characters that she met while working as a ranch hand. Almost unaware of what's been accomplished, we readers find ourselves shedding former stereotypes of these people in exchange for seeing them for what they are: unique, quirky, interesting, inexplicable men and women. The Weather (and the word deserves that capital letter, as you'll see upon reading the book) plays as large a role as the people in Ehrlich's book.
About the title: When she arrived in Wyoming, Erlich was grieving the death of someone important to her. As she works hard at physical labor, meets new people, falls in love with the land, and sheds her past like sweat running down her back, healing from grief occurs - although she doesn't exactly say this.
Altogether, a beautiful book and a wonderful read.
Average customer rating:
- Highly recommended for rural law dawgs and attorneys
- Burnedblack Mountain
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A Vast Amount of Trouble: A History of the Spring Creek Raid
John W. Davis
Manufacturer: Univ Pr of Colorado
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Goodbye, Judge Lynch: The End of a Lawless Era in Wyoming's Big Horn Basin
ASIN: 0870813102 |
Customer Reviews:
Highly recommended for rural law dawgs and attorneys.......2007-02-07
As a former deputy sheriff in the nowood valley, Ten Sleep, Wyoming, I found Mr. Davis' research and presentation outstanding. His descriptions and evaluations were right on the money. As a critical history buff, I was pleasantly surprised to find no faults or criticisms of Mr. Davis' work. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in historical jurisprudence. Things might have changed in "crime detection/investigation" but in the courtroom? not so much.
Burnedblack Mountain.......2006-02-01
Wyoming looms large for me, and I've alluded to a recent film about Wyoming "cowboys" in other reviews. Attorney John Davis, from somewhere in the Big Horn Basin, discusses events of 2 April 1909 that put the cowboy canard in its place. Those movie cowboys aren't cowboys because they're all hat and no cattle. They're sheepherders. So were Joe Allemand, shot to death on 2 April 1909, and Joe Enge, murdered and burned in his sheep wagon on Spring Creek.
Spring Creek was the last big battle of the western sheep wars, writes Mr. Davis, and was the first (only) Wyoming raid in which killers of sheepherders were convicted of murder. The murderers of Allemand, Emge, and another herder, burned to death with Emge in his wagon, were real cowboys acting out a drama that was a tragedy of the commons. Much of Wyoming even in 1909 was unfenced open range to which cattlemen claimed rights of preemption. Sheep and their crazy herders (cowboys debated overwhelming questions: Were men already crazy before they herded sheep, or were they made crazy by the sheep they herded?) were latecomers who competed for grass and water in a dry state. Sheep wrecked the range for cattle, eating grass down to the ground and then eating the ground. Then they'd bleat and excrete, wrecking water holes. In the Big Horn Basin commons, cattlemen and cowboys tolerated sheep and sheepherders as long as they knew their place. Where there were no fences, cattlemen helpfully drew deadlines, invisible lines in the sand beyond which sheep were not allowed to cross. Allemand and Emge crossed the line.
Allemand was foreign. Some accounts say he was Baszue; Davis writes that he was French. Allemand was an alien in an occupation dominated by Mexicans and Basques whose lives had been cheap. Mr. Allemand, though, was liked and respected by his neighbors despite being from somewhere else and despite sheep. Nobody wrote that he was crazy. Emge was foreign, but had been respected because he had been a cattleman before going to the dark side, sheep. He did not know his place. He kept his bovine arrogance despite turning to a disreputable occupation, sheep, and he openly disrespected his old cowboy cronies and their deadline. Emge, of course, represented something new under the hot Wyoming sun: old certitudes were dying. Wyoming, as territory and state, had run cattle and had been run by cattle. But Wyoming in the new 20th Century was born again; by 1909 Wyoming sheep were worth more than Wyoming cattle, and even founding fathers like cattle kings F.E. Warren & J.M. Carey were changing with the times. By 1909 cattle kings were running sheep.
That's the context of the story Mr. Davis tells. It's the story of an insular area, almost inbred, that was almost ripped apart by the aftermath of an atavistic raid. Davis excerpts Grand Jury transcripts that show communities and neighbors being pushed and pulled by the old and the new. He tells a story far more interesting than the fey fable that was nominated today for eight Academy Awards.
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