Vivid evocations of a place, its women, and how they live.
From the editors of Leaning into the Wind (1997), an anthology of women’s poems and essays that celebrate friendship in the High Plains, where winter comes early and distant neighbors become family.
Some of these pieces are by published writers, others are first efforts; some are about remarkable relatives, others about unlikely strangers who changed their lives—but all share a love for the place itself, the life lived there, and the friendships that have sustained them. “Here we form friendships that we expect to last the rest of our lives,” observes Shannon Dyer. This is not Starbucks territory: these women train horses, deliver calves, and hike high mountain trails. They know how to handle guns as well as write poems. Many are ranchers, wives, or daughters of ranchers, and they live on the land that stretches from Alberta to the Mexican border. They make chokeberry jam together, get together for a girls’ night on the town, and go deer hunting together. Some, like Dorothy Blackcrow Mack, recall the lessons they learned from older women such as her Black Crow mother-in-law Emma (who taught her how to pick sage for the sweat lodge, butcher cattle, and cook native dishes like “puppy soup”). Betty Downs recalls how the stories of Ione (who as a young shepherdess “learned how to be lonely”) helped her as a new bride. Many recall friends who died, mothers who suffered from mental illness (counseling programs didn’t exist in rural towns in the 1940s), and the closeness of family life. Susan Austen and Laurie Kutchins eloquently describe the spirit of a land where “the wind clicks across the emptiness . . . winter shakes its body over the bare and lovely hills,” and friendship is “forged out of its drifts, its dust and mud and shadows.”
Vivid evocations of a place, its women, and how they live.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-395-97708-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.
The nameless resister inside the White House speaks.
“The character of one man has widened the chasms of American political division,” writes Anonymous. Indeed. The Trump years will not be remembered well—not by voters, not by history since the man in charge “couldn’t focus on governing, and he was prone to abuses of power, from ill-conceived schemes to punish his political rivals to a propensity for undermining vital American institutions.” Given all that, writes the author, and given Trump’s bizarre behavior and well-known grudges—e.g., he ordered that federal flags be raised to full staff only a day after John McCain died, an act that insiders warned him would be construed as petty—it was only patriotic to try to save the country from the man even as the resistance movement within the West Wing simultaneously tried to save Trump’s presidency. However, that they tried did not mean they succeeded: The warning of the title consists in large part of an extended observation that Trump has removed the very people most capable of guiding him to correct action, and the “reasonable professionals” are becoming ever fewer in the absence of John Kelly and others. So unwilling are those professionals to taint their reputations by serving Trump, in fact, that many critical government posts are filled by “acting” secretaries, directors, and so forth. And those insiders abetting Trump are shrinking in number even as Trump stumbles from point to point, declaring victory over the Islamic State group (“People are going to fucking die because of this,” said one top aide) and denouncing the legitimacy of the process that is now grinding toward impeachment. However, writes the author, removal from office is not the answer, not least because Trump may not leave without trying to stir up a civil war. Voting him out is the only solution, writes Anonymous; meanwhile, we’re stuck with a president whose acts, by the resisters’ reckoning, are equal parts stupid, illegal, or impossible to enact.
Readers would do well to heed the dark warning that this book conveys.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5387-1846-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his...
Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior adviser weighs in on what it will take to defeat Donald Trump and repair some of the damage caused by the previous election’s “historically disturbing and perhaps democracy-destroying outcome.”
Plouffe (The Audacity To Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, 2009) managed Obama’s successful campaigns in 2008 and 2012. His unsurprising goal in 2020 is to take down Trump, and he provides a detailed guide for every American to become involved beyond just voting. Where the author is not offering specific suggestions for individual involvement, he engages in optimistic encouragement to put readers in the mindset to entertain his suggestions. Plouffe wisely realizes that many potential readers feel beaten down by the relentlessness of Trump’s improper behavior and misguided policies, so there is plenty of motivational exhortation that highly motivated readers might find unnecessary. When he turns to voting statistics, he’s on solid ground. Plouffe expresses certainty that Trump will face opposition from at least 65 million voters in the 2020 election. One of the author’s goals is to increase that number to somewhere between 70 and 75 million, which would be enough to win not only the popular votes for the Democratic Party nominee, but also the Electoral College by a comfortable margin. Some of that increased number can be achieved by increasing the percentage of citizens who vote, with additional gains from voters who vote for the Democratic nominee rather than symbolically supporting a third-party candidate. Plouffe also feels optimistic about persuading Obama supporters who—perhaps surprisingly—voted for Trump in 2016. As for individual involvement prior to November, the author favors direct action. Door-to-door canvassing is his favorite method, but he offers alternatives for those who cannot or will not take their opinions to the streets, including campaigning via social media. And while the author would love to change the Electoral College, he wisely tells readers they must live with it again this time around.
Though cheerleading occasionally grates, Plouffe offers good fodder for readers willing to put in the effort and follow his advice.Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-7949-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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