The Canyon: A Novel

by Stanley Crawford

Overview

Scotty’s family owns a lodge near their silver mine in the Colorado Rockies. Summers at the lodge are idyllic for Scotty and his cousin Mickey. The grown-ups are dealing with the complications of business and adult dysfunction, but the boys are more interested in the complications of puberty, especially when Rosalind, the teenage daughter of family friends, is on hand. To read this quiet, rich evocation of adolescent watchfulness is to experience what it is like to be fourteen years old, waiting for something to happen, aware of everything but oblivious to as much of it as possible. Readers will be reminded of such modern masters as William Maxwell and John Updike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826355621
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	03/01/2015
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	735 KB

About the Author

Stanley Crawford was a New Mexico garlic farmer, the owner since 1970 of El Bosque farm in Dixon, New Mexico, and the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, winner of the Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, and A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm.

Editorial Reviews

The Canyon bridges youth and maturity, achieving a perspective that transcends both.—The Rumpus

A wonderful portrait of the natural world and of the beginning of childhood's end, written with simplicity, rich humor, poetic depth, and restraint. The writing is very evocative of the time period, with deeply accurate descriptions of everyday things that bespeak the late 1940s. You really believe you are there. Throughout, there is a tranquility to the prose that is hard to match. What is unsaid underneath this tranquility is very powerful. There is also a quiet but lovely humor throughout the book. You just don't get books as well crafted and original as this very often.—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

A wonderful portrait of the natural world and of the beginning of childhood's end, written with simplicity, rich humor, poetic depth, and restraint. The writing is very evocative of the time period, with deeply accurate descriptions of everyday things that bespeak the late 1940s. You really believe you are there. Throughout, there is a tranquility to the prose that is hard to match. What is unsaid underneath this tranquility is very powerful. There is also a quiet but lovely humor throughout the book. You just don't get books as well crafted and original as this very often.—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

From the Publisher