Customer Reviews

Hell's Bottom, Colorado

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4 star:		(2)
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Hell's Bottom is a poignant collection of short stories that chronicles some of the watershed events in the lives of a Colorado ranch family. It's quite enjoyable on several levels.

I especially appreciated the attention to detail about life in modern rural America. This book chronicles ranching activities in an accurate manner- one can tell the author is familiar with this way of life. I don't believe that an outsider could have presented such an honest portrait. This realistic backdrop helped the already interesting characters become even more alive for me.

Hell's Bottom is an excellent read. I look forward to more by this author.

Pritchett's short stories are psychologically insightful into life's sometimes painful details and hidden triumphs -- expressed within the framework of everyday existence. Hard to find writing like this -- definitely worth your time.

Pritchett evokes the vivid images of landscape, ranching and families in the West. Set along Rocky Mountains, these stories show the beauty and sometimes messy reality of farming, ranching, and living. When writing in her clear-eyed prose, Pritchett has perfect pitch: all of her charcters and stories ring true. Highly Recommended.

This is an outstanding book! Pritchett' interconnected stories are a matter-of-fact and essential portrayal of the contemporary American West. Pritchett's characters are vivid in spite of (or beause of) her simple prose. Through the characters you get a feel for the beauty and stark reality of raising cattle, and families, in the Intermountain West. A refreshing read among the usual clutter of literature today.

Laura Pritchett has written an honest, elegant collection of stories about Colorado ranch life. This was the most engrossing, illuminating, and again, I use the word 'honest' set of stories I have come across this year. I read the book in one sitting, which for me is unusual. She successfully showed me a piece of America I formerly knew little about, and did so with the clarity and poignancy of a true poet.

I live in Larimer County of Colorado near where Laura Pritchett was raised. Although I believe the book was meant to be pure fiction, (murders are rare in our community, as are abortions) I see glimpses of our neighbors. The fire, the calf-birthing, the record-keeping--all of these things ring true. The relationships are sometimes painful, but also believable. I generally do not enjoy short stories, but these stories of one family are held together nicely.

"Hell's Bottom, Colorado" benefits from sharp, focused writing and real-life details, which make the stories ring true. Though each story stands alone, there is the connectedness of family saga as we are introduced to distinct, evocative members of this modern-day ranch family. A truly pleasant read.

Loops of orange baling twine, tobacco cans of rusted nails and a jar of aging veterinary salve, all in an unkempt shop - this is my first recollection of cowboy country. The cowboys come second. They come wandering into my emergency room, legs caked with mud and manure, frequently decorated with dried blood on torn denim. Supine on a gurney, the ubiquitous belt buckle points to the ceiling. The older the cowboy the more brass you can see through the worn, silver plating. The cowboys were always quiet, in fact too quiet, never whining or fussing. How do you quickly identify broken bones and busted spleens if there are no complaints? It always turned out OK though. If they made it to the ER, they made it home.

My time in ranch country was insulated from that hard life by air conditioning and the reasonable income of a country doctor. Quite appropriately I was never fully admitted to the ranching fraternity, but our family did receive their hospitality. We were privileged to get a taste of western life. That's why I found such pleasure entering Laura Pritchett's world of "Hell's Bottom, Colorado". It was a chance to feast on the sights, sounds and smells enjoyed by those wrestling a living from the land - those attempting the alchemy of translating short-grass to protein to dollar bills.

Two stories are told in "Hell's Bottom..." - one the story of high plains, the other an extended family, three generations, some marginally successful, some less. Just as in the old Nature vs. Nurture argument, I frequently wonder if it is the hard life of ranching that produces hard people or whether it just attracts them. Despite its beauty, the adversity of this Colorado landscape, this weather and these cows provide the trial that demonstrates what the characters of Pritchett's world are made of. In their world, just as I in my own western sojourn, redemption is typically earned thru toil and only occasionally grace. This ratio needs to be turned up side down. No one can out-work the West.

"Carolyn rubs her hand across the middle of her chest and then raises it to wave as they turn their horses back around. They wave back before heading towards Del, whom she can barely see if she squints. He's fixing fence along the road that runs through their place. All day he'll be working - walking for miles, tightening the barbed wire here, replacing a strand there."

"What she tells people when she speaks of her love for him is this: That she fell in love with him because he can fix fence and because he plays the piano. That she met him in a classical music class in college, that he tilts his head toward particular pieces of music, even if he's in a restaurant, even if he's in the old truck - that he does this and still knows how to break a horse, snap a chicken's neck, fix a fence. That when his hands rest on the piano keyboard, they are scraped, callused, dirty."

In Hell's Bottom, grace and toil, beauty and brokenness tangle together, just like the baling twine on the shelf. The author tells her story in freestanding, yet connected chapters, recounted by different characters. I delighted in the perspective of a young person's voice used to narrate an adult's book. Their relative innocence and dependency on their dysfunctional parents lends an added tenor of apprehension to the tale. Here, Jess pours her heart out to her mother after the latest boyfriend makes her brother retrieve just-shot ducks from a bitterly cold, November pond.

"'He had to swim with all seven ducks, and Mom, he needs a new pair of tennis shoes.' All of a sudden, even though I don't mean to, I'm crying hard and leaning into her shoulder and I can feel her surprise, and I just keep gulping in air and the words keep coming out when there's enough air to form them. `His shoes are so old, and I need a new coat and it's so cold, and he shouldn't have to be swimming, he's not a dog.' I'm just pouring out everything, but I manage to keep quiet about the main thing I'm thinking, which is, `How come you never notice any of this?'"

Yet another child, Leanne, a young teen in the only intact family understands the blessing of her parent's vocation as she helps out pregging cows at an early, autumn roundup.

"Years layer up and weave together; bundles of images swirl together in my mind. I remember how turquoise the sky can be, how the cottonwoods drop golden leaves, how a calf being born slides from its mother and falls into spring snow. From today I will remember Dad on the chestnut horse rounding up the calves, memorize Mom's slap on Billy's shoulder, capture Jess's singsong chatter to no one, absorb the heat and the sky and the smells. I will remember this warm fall day and the summer that came before and the winter that is about to come. Someday, when I leave here, I will close my eyes and remember, and I hope it will be enough to hold my heart together."

These are pleasant memories that anyone who's grown up in a rural life will resonate with, yet the lives of "Hell's Bottom's" characters play out choices that make a hard life harder. If you love the West, you'll love the splendor with which Laura Pritchett paints her Colorado world. You'll love the intrigue of this family, but often you'll be thankful they're not kin.

This was an amazing book-- it's no wonder it won the Pen West award. Pritchett's interconnected short stories show the relationships and heartbreak in a ranching family in Colorado. The story is full of real, fascinating characters whose emotions felt incredibly raw and honest to me. The Western landscape is gorgeous, and so vividly portrayed that it almost feels like a character itself. This book is so full of heart, it will stay with you for a long time.