Review by Booklist Review
Poet Galvin turns to prose to describe the demanding and isolated life on a high-altitude ranch stretched between the mountains of the Colorado-Wyoming border. Galvin's brief, episodic chapters are like short film clips depicting the beauty and brutality of the land and its weather and the stoicism of its inhabitants. Galvin relates tales about App Worster, the first man to claim and live on the land (Indians knew better), gleaned from conversations with Worster's son Ray, who was 12 years old before he saw his first stranger. The next family of meadow dwellers included another of Galvin's sources, Lyle, a master log-cabin builder. Each succinct anecdote crystallizes the harsh realities of life in a sod house, the numbing wildness of blizzards, the maddening glare of the snow when the sun returns, and the exhaustion of grueling, often dangerous, labor. Galvin also tells stories about coyotes and beavers, feats of superhuman endurance and miraculous recoveries, and untimely or unlikely deaths. He manages to be both vivid and laconic, setting the perfect tone for writing about the great American West. ~--Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
These ragged sketches of ranch life along the Wyoming-Colorado border depict Galvin's neighbors--hardscrabble folk--in wry, stoic stories of skill, survival and loss that flash back and forth across 100 years of the high meadow's history. The author's ( Imaginary Timber ) style of lyrical reserve is sufficient to preserve Lyle, Ray, Clara and Appleton in prose amber, but he is too respectful of Lyle to press him on why his sister Clara left the ranch and blew her brains out. The prose soars only in descriptions of weather in the meadow, of Lyle's ax work and Ray's machinery. Still, there is spare beauty here, and readers of Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and Rick Bass will feel at home in Galvin's country. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This wonderful collection of vignettes and short sketches centers on a high country meadow located in the Neversummer Mountains along the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin, author of three books of poetry ( Elements, Copper Canyon Pr., 1988 ) , knows the landscape intimately and conveys an unforgettable sense of the beauty and isolation of the area. Equally fascinating are the portraits of the few who inhabit this landscape of rugged individualists and family ranches. Rarely has an author captured life in the American West with such poignancy. Highly recommended for most collections.-- Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, Wash. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
YA-- A true story that reads like a novel, its focal point being a piece of land in the Neversummer Mountains on the Colorado-Wyoming border. In a series of vivid vignett e s and short sketches, Gavin records the 100-year history of the meadow and the few people who lived and died there. His description of every facet of life there, its seasons, the weather, the wildlife, is so evocative that readers can easily understand why its inhabitants care so much about it. This fine piece of regional writing will recall the land and people of the American West to anyone who has been there, and introduce them to those who have not. It is a book that would grace any collection. --Pamela B. Rearden, Centerville Regonial Library, Fairfax County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A passionate hundred-year history of a small mountain ranch on the Colorado-Wyoming border. Galvin (Writing/Univ. of Iowa) was raised and still lives for part of each year in Tie Siding, Wyoming. Here, he tells of the lives of his neighbors and of the successive owners of a ranch consisting in the main of a 360-acre hay meadow. Galvin's annals are comprised of one hundred very brief vignettes, remarkable for their sympathetic portrayals of these men and women and their Antaeus-like symbiosis with the beautiful but unforgiving land. Cutting back and forth in time, the author tells of Appleton (``App'') Worster, who homesteaded the meadow in 1895, raising three boys but losing two wives and finally the farm itself in 1938. App was buried on a ridge where his sons had to use drills and dynamite to dig his grave. Galvin also writes of App's son Ray, who, while logging at age 12 with his brothers and father, saw a man fishing and was struck dumb by astonishment--it was the first time Ray had ever seen someone he didn't know. And then there's the meadow's present owner, Lyle, slowly drowning in emphysema and condemned to sitting by himself and gazing at the log buildings he made by hand and at the meadow where he cut timothy grass for 40 years. Galvin's montage engages through its multiple views, but just as often it perplexes: The funeral of a man is described, but then the man reappears and dies only later in the book; and the relationships between some of the principal characters prove a formidable puzzle, at least at first. Still, Galvin's progressive deepening and widening of his story, and his comely prose, more than compensate. Close-ups of seldom-seen bedrock people of the American West, adroitly drawn and deeply felt.
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