Review by Booklist Review
Who would view the confluence of COVID-19 and Colorado's wildfires as a good thing? Virtuoso novelist and nature writer Pritchett (The Blue Hour, 2017) contemplates these dual disasters from the perspectives of a disparate group of characters whose experiences force them to process some soul-searching evaluations. Of varying ages and backgrounds, political viewpoints and economic wherewithal, the people (and owls and bears, even trees) who call Sleeping Bear Mountain home appreciate their surroundings and acknowledge the threats in equally diverse ways. When evacuations force everyone and everything from their homes, be it A-frame or cave, tree branch or horse ranch, the loss of habitat is felt by humans at an almost animal level and vice versa. In Pritchett's empathic telling, we feel for Mama Home Bear and White Owl as viscerally as we do for Gretl and Sherm. Pritchett's creativity is boundless as she bends formats and blends voices in this vibrant paean to nature's fragility. "How shivering beautiful that we all watch one another in this blink of time, the mountain mumbled." At levels both micro and macro, Pritchett brings an electric connectivity to her portrait of the precariousness of this one wild, threatened world.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A Colorado town grapples with wildfires and the Covid-19 pandemic in the uneven latest from Pritchett (Hell's Bottom, Colorado). The roughly sketched narrative begins with related vignettes, each containing a series of shifting points of view. In the opening scene, ecoactivist Gretel tries to shoo a deer away from poisonous flowers with a BB gun. Then Mariana, a neighbor, accidentally hits the deer with her truck, an event witnessed by Sherm, an unemployed bartender, who takes it home for meat. Other sections portray the spreading wildfire from the perspective of a moose, a mountain, and the town itself. Pritchett's writing takes off in moments when the affinity between human and nature catches the characters by surprise, as when Norman is overcome by watching a hawk try to catch a sparrow, and Sherm, laid up alone with Covid, watches a mallard duck struggling to take flight and identifies with the bird. Too often, though, the project can feel indulgent and tedious, as in a 13-page section in which Gretel attempts astrological readings of the town's residents. The various parts don't quite cohere, leaving readers lost in the haze. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Pritchett's novel details the effects of wildfire on a Colorado community. Early on, a woman named Gretel--the closest thing to a central character you'll find here--explains her situation: "I live on the evacuation perimeter of what is now Colorado's largest wildfire, which has been burning for months." That she does so as part of a grant application--the text of which is one of several found documents included in the book--is an early indication that this novel isn't a simple narrative of humanity at the mercy of a changing climate. Later, Pritchett includes the text of a short play, and a host of nonhuman voices also show up, including a raven whose mind is also on the effects of the fire: "Hunker, pant, rest, cat darts by, bear gimps by, one paw burned." The human characters have a fraught relationship with nature; the wildfire originated from a camper neglecting to extinguish a campfire, and an early scene details a deer being struck and killed by a pickup. Gretel is suffering from chronic health issues exacerbated by Covid-19. Pritchett also alludes to political divisions within the community: "Before that, someone stole her BLM sign. Which she had to explain to her neighbor didn't stand for the Bureau of Land Management." Pritchett finds unexpected moments of grace, whether from a smokejumper's routine ("Float. Hands on steering guides, I tug on the left as the jump spot nears") or through one middle-aged man's penchant for the guitar ("Yeah, there is still a jelly jar of whiskey. There will always be a jelly jar. But there will be two jelly jars fewer because of the guitar"). It's an unorthodox but effective way of illustrating the small-scale effects of environmental devastation. An immersive story of a changing landscape, innovatively told. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
