The Meadow

by James Galvin

Overview

An American Library Association Notable Book

In discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider's web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doing he reveals an experience that is part of our heritage and mythology. For Lyle, Ray, Clara, and App, the struggle to survive on an independent family ranch is a series of blameless failures and unacclaimed successes that illuminate the Western character. The Meadow evokes a sense of place that can be achieved only by someone who knows it intimately.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805027037
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/15/1993
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,063,280
Product dimensions:	5.45(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Raised in northern Colorado, James Galvin is the author of three volumes of poetry and a novel, Fencing the Sky. He has received the Nation/Discovery Award as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Institutes. Mr. Galvin divides his time between Iowa City, where he teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his ranch near Tie Siding, Wyoming.

Editorial Reviews

Gifted poet James Galvin blends fiction and fact into a haunting story . . . This careful, honest, and passionate exploration gives The Meadow its power and beauty.” —Harry Middleton,The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

These ragged sketches of ranch life along the Wyoming-Colorado border depict Galvin's neighbors--hardscrabble folk--in wry, stoic stories of skill, survival and loss that flash back and forth across 100 years of the high meadow's history. The author's ( Imaginary Timber ) style of lyrical reserve is sufficient to preserve Lyle, Ray, Clara and Appleton in prose amber, but he is too respectful of Lyle to press him on why his sister Clara left the ranch and blew her brains out. The prose soars only in descriptions of weather in the meadow, of Lyle's ax work and Ray's machinery. Still, there is spare beauty here, and readers of Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and Rick Bass will feel at home in Galvin's country. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

This wonderful collection of vignettes and short sketches centers on a high country meadow located in the Neversummer Mountains along the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin, author of three books of poetry ( Elements, Copper Canyon Pr., 1988 ) , knows the landscape intimately and conveys an unforgettable sense of the beauty and isolation of the area. Equally fascinating are the portraits of the few who inhabit this landscape of rugged individualists and family ranches. Rarely has an author captured life in the American West with such poignancy. Highly recommended for most collections.-- Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, Wash.

Library Journal

YA-- A true story that reads like a novel, its focal point being a piece of land in the Neversummer Mountains on the Colorado-Wyoming border. In a series of vivid vignett e s and short sketches, Gavin records the 100-year history of the meadow and the few people who lived and died there. His description of every facet of life there, its seasons, the weather, the wildlife, is so evocative that readers can easily understand why its inhabitants care so much about it. This fine piece of regional writing will recall the land and people of the American West to anyone who has been there, and introduce them to those who have not. It is a book that would grace any collection. --Pamela B. Rearden, Centerville Regonial Library, Fairfax County, VA

School Library Journal