Delightful vignettes about caring for animals large and small in the West make this book an enjoyable and satisfying read.
An entertaining memoir recalls the beginning of a veterinarian’s career in the early 1960s in Montana.
In June 1960, immediately after graduation, newly minted veterinarian Gross (Travels with Charlize, 2015) left his native Arizona with his wife of two months, Rosalie, and headed north to the sprawling hinterlands of Sidney, Montana. Eager to gain practical experience, the young associate county veterinarian jumped enthusiastically into 10- and 12-hour days, plus alternate weekends, dividing his time between the Sidney Animal Hospital and “house” calls to horse and cattle ranches within a 40- or 50-mile radius. Charm, wit, and an obvious affection for his patients permeate the pages of this volume, originally released in 2011. A healthy dose of humor, self-deprecating and otherwise, adds welcome levity to some graphic, detailed descriptions of the medical procedures Gross performed. Today, many of us associate veterinarians with doctors who tend to our furry or feathered companions, but the bulk of Gross’ stint in Montana was spent treating large animals: horses, cattle, and pigs. This required physical strength as well as medical competence. Veterinary medicine has progressed in the 50-plus years since Gross ventured out of Phoenix, but in 1960, vets performed much of the care for large animals without anesthesia. Imagine the job of drawing blood from a not-too-willing, wide-awake bull or castrating 16 recently captured wild horses. Gross recounts his particular fondness for the small animals he treated, especially dogs—Skipper the border collie, who got caught by a lawn mower, and Frick and Frack, two bluetick hounds with faces full of porcupine quills. Bringing everything into sharper focus are the vivid depictions of the countryside and the ranchers of Richland County, Montana, and the Badlands of North Dakota. The author peppers his account with a bit too much technical jargon, but he is an articulate observer, and he knows how to tell a compelling story.
Delightful vignettes about caring for animals large and small in the West make this book an enjoyable and satisfying read.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940598-81-9
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Book Publishers Network
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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