As part of The Colorado Sun’s literary section – SunLit – we have staff picks from bookstores across the state. >> Click here for more SunLit
This week‘s bookstore: Out West Books, 533 Main Street, Grand Junction
outwestbooks.co | @outwestbooks on Twitter, Instagram
Deep Creek
By Pam HoustonW.W. Norton & Co. $15.95 January 2022
From the publisher: On her 120-acre home high in the Colorado Rockies, acclaimed author Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Egg chicks and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. On the same subject : 8 Surprising Things Your Teeth Can Tell About Your Health. Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what connects her to the world, mainly the ranch. Along with her feral Irish hounds and a troupe of Icelandic horses, donkeys, and sheep spirits, the ranch becomes Houston’s sanctuary, where she learns how the natural world mothered and healed her after a childhood of horrific parental abuse and neglect.
From Marya at Out West Books: Pam Houston took her dues from “Cowboys are My Weakness”, my favorite book from my early years as a bookseller, and bought herself a ranch in southwest Colorado. Her book “Deep Creek” is an exploration of 25 years as a single farm owner and part of her life; of writing, of unspeakable trauma, of teaching, lecturing and travelling.
Pam’s writing is so easy to read and so relatable to women, to Colorado people. It’s like you’re sitting on the sofa with a damn eoquent and entertaining speaker. Although I have never seen her place, I know exactly what it is like and although I have only seen the South Fork Fire in the distance, I know exactly what it was like to be in the middle of it. For all of Pam’s travels (she had to pay for the farm somehow, the lectures and workshops being the most important), she always got stuck when she returned to her farm. Doesn‘t that happen to all of us? We can go and we can do, but come home and look out the kitchen window and just say “Ahhh” makes everything right with the world.
Tallgrass
By Sandra DallasSt. Martins Griffin $17.99 Feb 2008
From the publisher: During World War II, a family’s life is turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. When a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. See the article : FOCUS: Record women, LGBTQ hopefuls of elections run to shake up politics in Japan. This is her home as Rennie Stroud has never seen it.
She has just turned thirteen and, until this moment, life has been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and, with them, a change in attitude. And Rennie will discover secrets that will destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, “Tallgrass” is a thrilling exploration of the darkest and best parts of the human heart.
From Marya at Out West Books: This is one of my favorite books by Denver author Sandra Dallas. Although she never names it, I think this book is based on Camp Amache, near Granada, which was in the news for becoming a National Historic Site in March of this year. Nearly 10,000 people were housed in Camp Amache “Internment” (why don’t we just do what Daniel James Brown, author of Facing the Mountain, calls them “concentration” camps?) on the Eastern Plains of Colorado during World War II.
Some of those people were teenagers. Some of those teenagers were bound to mix with the townspeople and that is sure to be a recipe for disaster. This story has murder, crossed love, inhumanity and…humanity. To this day, I have not read a book that deals with the relationship between townspeople and incarcerated people as “Tallgrass” does. I read this years ago and still remember every bit of the story.
To Say Nothing of the Dog
By Connie WillisPenguin Random House$8. To see also : Ector District Library ready to sell books.99Dec 1998
From the publisher: Ned Henry is in dire need of a rest. He flits between the 21st century and the 1940s in search of a Victorian conundrum known as the bishop’s bird stump. It is part of a project to restore the famous Coventry Cathedral, which was destroyed in a Nazi air raid more than a century earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right – not only to save the project but to prevent history itself from changing.
From Didi Herald, bookseller at Out West Books: Colorado author Connie Willis’ delightful comedy takes us to a future in which Lady Schrapnell, a wealthy, sleazy American funds time travel so she can rebuild Coventry Cathedral to its former glory. a great Irishman. Grandmother then removed an epsilon in front of the Bishop’s Bird Stump. When a future historian is sent to the Victorian era to escape Lady Schrapnell, he discovers love and a problem that could bring the fabric of time to an end. This multi-award winning romp is hilarious and ready to be rediscovered.
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