Tributary

by Barbara K. Richardson

Overview

Utah Book Award Winner
WILLA Literary Finalist Award Winner

"A quest to belong is the theme of this novel from Richardson, whose lyrical prose and heartfelt characters shine through."
&mdashPUBLISHERS WEEKLY

A misfit in a Mormon frontier town, Clair Martin shows what polygamy feels like from inside the fold. Her stubborn search for identity takes Clair beyond the confines of the Utah Territory to the slums of Reconstruction Dixie, and back again. Here, one young woman's life becomes a quiet revolution to untangle what you inherit from what you need.

BARBARA K. RICHARDSON's debut novel, Guest House, launched the first literary Truck Stop Tour in the nation. In Tributary, she claims the land of her Mormon ancestors who settled the northern Salt Lake Valley. Richardson earned an MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. Aside from writing, Barbara has renovated four houses, enjoyed Argentine tango, fallen in love with tai chi, helped can the West's finest plum jam, adored conifers, and planted thousands of trees and shrubs for others. Barbara is also an avid environmentalist. She lives in Kamas, Utah.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937226046
Publisher:	Torrey House Press
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

BARBARA K. RICHARDSON's debut novel, Guest House, launched the first literary Truck Stop Tour in the nation. In Tributary, she claims the land of her Mormon ancestors who settled the northern Salt Lake Valley. Richardson earned an MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. Aside from writing, Barbara has renovated four houses, enjoyed Argentine tango, fallen in love with tai chi, helped can the West's finest plum jam, adored conifers, and planted thousands of trees and shrubs for others. Barbara is also an avid environmentalist. She lives in Kamas, Utah.

Read an Excerpt

Tributary

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By Barbara K. Richardson

Torrey House Press

Copyright © 2012 Barbara K. Richardson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781937226046

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From Chapter 19

I’d have missed it. I would have driven right on by.
We’d left the Raft River Range behind us long since. The low ridge we’d been climbing swung east, then curved northwest, forming a small valley before the prairie stretched on, flat and featureless, again. We descended. The ranch house lay in sight right from our rounding of the butte, but the wood and daub walls and the grey sod roof so resembled the desert around them, it was only with a loss in elevation that the building came up different from the land.
A squat rectangle with a bright blue door.
Stephen played a hand down over his beard. “Mother shipped the paint up, special.”
It was the first and last of Ada’s touches.
Bits of ceiling brushed onto his hat when we ducked in. “There’s the kitchen, that’s the bunk.” The kitchen was a camp stove, a half-empty sack and a fry pan in the dirt. A dog slunk in, licked the pan for leavings, and slunk back out at the easy swing of Stephen’s hat.
“Ow!” Tierre howled.
Stephen stepped out. “They ain’t pets, son.” Then he leaned back in, “Ma’am,” and nodded and left me to it.
I bent toward the cast iron pan and stopped, letting a few tears fall. Nine days’ travel. That’s all this aching is. I took it by the handle and surveyed the dark remainder of the house. A crate with playing cards scattered on top. No windows, no chairs, no furniture at all. The bunk in the corner was of Stephen’s design—a blanket folded the long way and laid right on the dirt.
I stepped outside and scanned the rise of sage behind me, the sage plain stretching away in front. Not a sound in the little valley. Even the dogs had gone.
“I’ll be go to hell,” I said. Then I asked my good friend Ada. Where’s the homestead? Where’s the outhouse? Where’s the cellar, the garden, the shade?
I hiked uphill, between two small, rock-strewn springs. The dry heat was familiar, the tasks ahead all too well-known. They stripped the six years I’d been South right off, and I was alone, a girl again, dumb caretaker, dutiful maid, a sexless thing climbing for freedom from Erastus Pratt and the bonnets in the Big Field, climbing to find wildflowers in the hills, leaving the faithful to work their rows and cook their gains and store and worry on them.
I cursed myself, and cursed my pride, thinking anything could be different. Born a servant, I’d die a servant. Curses marked every step of my climb until I reached the ridge and the hard blue ranges in the distance stopped me. Stopped my thoughts.
South and east, north and west—Stephen’s ranch was ringed by mountains. Embraced on every side. Their long blue arms skinned years back off me, more years, even, than I had. Empty, and still, I walked the ridge to a clump of splayed cedars. There, I found shade. There the blatting of sheep drifted up from below, where three men moved like flotsam on a pale, slow sea.
We do not choose where prophecy takes us. I wondered, staring out at the unbounded ranch, if I had courage enough to live what I’d foreseen.


Continues...

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Excerpted from Tributary by Barbara K. Richardson Copyright © 2012 by Barbara K. Richardson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

"Stunning…Gritty…Remarkable…"
—15 BYTES

"Richardson, whose Mormon ancestors settled in the northern Salt Lake Valley, offers a complete portrait of life in the American West by exploring the struggles of a woman living outside the centers of power. Engaging and beautifully written, Tributary is a welcome addition to the current conversation."
—5280 MAGAZINE

"As wild and isolating as the determined, defiant Clair, the prairies and mountain ranges seduce both narrator and reader. Richardson has created rich, memorable characters."
—HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

"In some ways, the novel serves to circumvent the convention of Western literature…the story explores how the landscape itself becomes the salvation of Clair Martin."
—THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

"Richardson takes readers back to 1870 Utah for this tale of strength and survival. Raised as a Mormon, our hero Clair Martin travels to the American South, through Shoshone country, and back to Utah."
—DENVER POST

"A quest to belong is the theme of this novel from Richardson, whose lyrical prose and heartfelt characters shine through. This novel has much to offer, including a balanced perspective on a controversial time in Mormon history, but its greatest gift is its wisdom about finding one’s own path."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Richardson is a new American voice worth listening to."
—PETER HELLER, author of The Painter and The Dog Stars

"Beautifully written and engaging, this is a story of one woman and her refusal to cave into societal norms in order to seek her own difficult and inspired path."
—LAURA PRITCHETT, author of Stars Go Blue

"You'll love resolute Clair Martin, the equal of any man—or religion. Clair's strength and survival are the heritage of western women."
—SANDRA DALLAS, author of True Sisters

"A remarkable odyssey of the American West, told in one of the most clear–sighted, unjudging, and original voices I've come across in years."
—MOLLY GLOSS, author of The Jump–Off Creek

"Seldom does a novel come along that is as beautifully written and emotionally honest as Tributary. A lyrical and haunting story not to be missed."
—MARGARET COEL, author of Buffalo Bill's Dead Now

"From polygamist Mormon desert settlements to the yellow fever–plagued Gulf to an Idaho sheep ranch, Richardson evokes the 19th–century West and the human heart in all their complexity."
—BARBARA WRIGHT, author of the Spur Award–winning novel Plain Language

From the Publisher