What I’m reading now:
The Hearts of Horses, 2007 fiction by Molly Gloss, Houghton Mifflin, 289 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0-618-79990-9. The award-winning Oregon author’s latest triumph is a rendering of lyrical beauty and a pitch perfect evocation of ranch life in Eastern Oregon, at the outset of World War I. It is the story of Martha Lessen, one of many young women of the era who “came through the country breaking horses” when “the war had swept up all the young men from the ranches.” They “could break horses as well as any man but they had their own ways of doing it, not such a bucking Wild West show.”
This is not strictly a woman’s book or a horse book. It is a story about deceptively simple people leading deceptively simple lives. With the exception of Kent Haruf’s work, it has been years since I enjoyed such finely spun gold from this vein.
On by nightstand:
Damascus Gate, 1998 fiction by Robert Stone, Houghton Mifflin, 500 pages, ISBN: 0-395-66569-8. Unforgettable story of Jerusalem, the Eternal City, and its seething tensions. Against this backdrop, Stone makes his memorable characters face ultimate questions: What is the price of loyalty, of betrayal, of faith?
Just finished:
For Whom The Bell Tolls, the 1940 Hemmingway classic set in the Spanish Civil War, Scribner (trade paper) 471 pages, ISBN: 0-684-80335-7. One of my author friends recommends (re)reading the classics. This was my start on his advice. It was on my mind for days after I put it down. The book was foreshadowed by a full three-act play, The Fifth Column—yes, in 1937 Papa wrote a play—the first U.S. production of which, some seventy years later, starred my son, Kelly, in off-Broadway’s Mint Theater, March through mid-May. The Legacy,