Skin Of The Earth: Stories From Nevada'S Back Country

by Art Gibney

Overview

Nevada's back country is a region of drought-parched sagebrush and snow-clogged winters, rugged ranchers and fiercely independent loners seeking solitude in remote canyons. But the Nevada of Art Gibney's superb new story collection is part of the modern West, where traditional ways collide uneasily with apocalyptic technologies, ranchers contend with BLM bureaucrats about the use of the land, downwinders die of horrible malignancies, and no canyon is inviolate to the ubiquitous military presence. Gibney vividly captures the tensions of the contemporary rural West—of ranchers struggling to preserve a valued way of life and sons yearning to escape to easier livelihoods, of dreamers trying to flee the modern world only to find themselves entangled in its complications, of a beautiful landscape full of invisible and deadly poisons. Few stories of the West depict the primal herder's life as vividly as "The Wild Cow," and the heartbreaking dignity of the dying rancher in "The Manure Spreader" will linger long in the reader's mind. The characters in "A Hard Way to Make a Hundred Bucks" explore the mystery of a secret Department of Defense installation while reflecting on the larger mystery of an impending birth, and a drought in "Cloudshine" launches a series of events that threaten a peaceful Mormon community. Gibney knows his characters well, their strengths and their foibles, and he knows the land they live on. He writes with sympathy, humor, a keen sense of irony, and a sharp ear for dialogue. These are memorable stories of a West that is both remote from and thoroughly enmeshed in the modern world, a rural place where cattle and rabbit brush live side by side with atomic fallout, where open spaces conceal the deepest secrets of the human heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874175134
Publisher:	University of Nevada Press
Publication date:	08/01/2002
Series:	Western Literature and Fiction Series
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

An early career with the Forest Service first provided Art Gibney with the opportunity to see, explore, and enjoy Nevada's vast rural region-an experience that informs his writing today. Gibney's short fiction has appeared in many literary publications including the International Quarterly, The Crescent Review,Other Voices, ZYZZYVA, and Story Quarterly. He currently resides in Northern California.

Table of Contents

The Manure Spreader
Skin of the Earth
Wild Cow
Teacher's Pay
Heading for the Holy Land
A Hard Way to Make a Hundred Bucks
Water Baby
Mud Brick
The Bear Hunters
Flying to the Moon
X
Cloudshine

Editorial Reviews

Nevada has long been mistreated as an empty quarter. Gibney’s powerful stories, however, populate this so-called blank space, making it an epicenter of strange doings whose shock waves will reach you wherever you may be.” —Cheryll Glotfelty, ISLE


“There is a strong sense of home in all these stories, a pure love of place, especially when it has to be fought for and even when it has to be left.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, September 8 2002


“Gibney is a serious writer worth knowing about.” —Catherine Coggan, Southwest BookViews, Winter 2003


“Without nostalgia, Gibney presents characters in the changing rural West, characters who seek satisfaction in life even if it means living outside the traditional Western lifestyles.” —Doug Werden,Southwestern American Literature, Spring 2003
 


“Slim first collection that goes into unexplored territory both on the map and in the heart.” —Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2002


“…Those who say young writers have forgotten the lessons they should have learned from Raymond Carver ought to take a look at Gibney.” —Howard Junker, editor of ZYZZYVA: The Journal of West Coast Writers & Artists

From the Publisher

A recurring phrase in this debut collection is "the middle of nowhere." Former Forest Service employee Gibney uses his knowledge of the land, in particular Nevada's back country, to craft original tales about various eccentrics-including ranchers (of both cattle and ostriches), survivalists, holy men, and strange military personnel. The atomic testing of the past lurks in the background, while the present offers the commonality of death by cancer. The radioactive history of the area is only one of several threads linking these tales; others include the loss of father, family, or community. In the title story, Judy and Dean are squatting in a cabin on National Forest land trying to stay away from the mysterious "war." Yet circumstances remind them that everyone lives on the "skin of the earth," that we are all connected, however tenuously. In "Heading for the Holy Land," Elias Mose pushes a shopping cart 90 miles from the nearest supermarket while proclaiming that he is heading for Jerusalem, only to disappear into a snowstorm and leave only his cart behind. These stories are somewhat uneven but are well written, interesting, and provocative. Recommended for larger public libraries.-Jack Hafer, Chesterfield Cty. Lib. Syst., VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Slim first collection that goes into unexplored territory both on the map and in the heart. When a story opens with "Froggy had the job of chasing mushroom clouds in a Plymouth Fury," where else could we be but Nevada? More specifically, these dozen pieces are set in or around the small town of Adaven (look closely) in a West that's still quite wild though populated with bear hunters, Mormon bishops, ostrich farms, intrusive government forces, and a never-ending salty metal taste in the air. "The Manure Spreader" is about a father and son working a bleak farm in the shadow of a nuclear test site. A time of mysterious war is the background for the dreamy title story, about a couple trying to rough it in the mountains on a mine claim. "Wild Cow" is a near-perfect piece in which a father-son hunt for a cow gone wild comes to stand for a vanishing world of secluded ranches and cowboy morality. The ritual of eating calf-fries-cow testicles-for added fertility in "Teacher's Pay" becomes the final rite for a son finally becoming a man. Two others set off to learn the truth of Area 51 ("A Hard Way to Make a Hundred Bucks") just as the first baby to be born in Adaven arrives. "Mud Brick" is a brief meditation on unlikely love from a woman who followed her husband into the wilderness. Gibney's tone is always clean and lovely, his message always clear: "Maybe it's just progress and modern times, the dying off of an old and useless way of life. Maybe it's something in the water that poisoned us from within, or the bone-dry end of a five-year drought that boiled out the best in all of us." The quirky Nevada we've never really known, told convincingly.

Kirkus Reviews