Customer Reviews

The Meadow

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is a book to savor. Its chapters fall somewhere between vignettes and prose poems, and reading the book is like leafing through an album of old photographs. The storyline is made up of the threads of connections to be made between each of the word-pictures. The book itself seems to be neither fiction nor nonfiction. Galvin refers to himself and his family in some of the chapters, but the person at the center of the book is a neighbor, Lyle Van Waning, who has spent most of his life living near the meadow of the book's title, in the high elevations between Laramie, Wyoming, and Ft. Collins, Colorado.

By today's standards of urban comforts and conveniences (many of which have found their way into lives of people who live far from the city), Lyle lives a kind of pioneer existence, isolated much of the year by deep snow, living by his skills as a carpenter and builder, and the proceeds of hay harvested from his meadow, and spending the time when he can do neither of these in his shop making machinery parts, carved wooden boxes, firearms, and whatever else captures his fascination. He is an immensely private and self-sufficient man, who never marries and seems to hold in his heart the strongest connection with a dead sister who committed suicide. (A painting by Clara Van Waning appears on the cover of the book.) Galvin captures in Lyle the kind of fiercely independent spirit that made survivors of those who first settled and thrived in the American wilderness.

There are other men and women associated with the meadow. And their stories are also told, including App Worster and his son Ray, whose family owns the meadow before the Van Wanings, and who lose it during the Depression. We also learn something of a neighboring rancher Frank Lilley, who is dying of cancer, and whose family continues to keep his ranch going. There's also Ferris, who tries the frontier patience of his neighbors to the breaking point by dumping truckloads of old appliances on his property and denuding his small pasture with over-grazing.

"The Meadow" is told with wonderful precision, a photographic attention to details, and a deep feeling for a kind of life that survives in spite of isolation and often hostile elements. While Galvin does not romanticize the lives of his characters, he does celebrate them. There's a deep attachment in this book to the region that is his home, the landscape and changing seasons, and the people who have put down roots there. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the West and the lives of those who have adapted to its harsh extremities and cherished its stark beauty. As a companion, I would recommend Mark Spragg's "Where Rivers Change Direction," an account of growing up in northwest Wyoming.

I read The Meadow. Read it again. Skipped to some of my favorite sections. Read them. Read the whole thing over again. Loaned it to my mother. She read it. Handed it to my father. He read it. My mother took it to her book club. Four members of the book club read it. I took it to work. Three coworkers read it. The book finally fell apart. So I bought a new copy. The images of life on the Meadow will undoubtedly stay with me for ages.

Galvin uses a kind of stream of consciousness, though instead of being inside a character's mind, the reader is tied to the land. Once the structure becomes apparent, one follows the author's meanderings back and forth through the history and people who've lived on or passed through the meadow. Using powerful imagery and compelling people, Galvin shows how we in the West feel about our area. A sense of place is the focal point for many of our lives. Those who can live "just anywhere there's a job" won't understand, but for those who identify with the land in the West , it's an unforgettable work.

I was absolutely stunned by the superb story telling and the poetic quality of the well-crafted prose in James Galvin's _The Meadow_. This is *literature.* So if you have literary tastes and an interest in the American west, there is absolutely no doubt that you will enjoy this wonderful book.

The realism of rural life in the mountains is combined with haunting personal stories that keep you reading. The author has a genuine empathy for nature and for the individual people who have the stamina to survive in a harsh environment. Highly recommended.

I would give this book 6 stars, maybe even ten, if it were possible. I read this book through the first time, closed the back cover, flipped the book over and started reading it again. I have never done that with another book, before or since.

When poets turn to prose the reader is often in for a treat. Galvin is foremost a poet, and each word in this book was chosen with a poet's parsimony, a concern for space, a search for just the right word for the situation. The result is a beautiful book written in a spare style.

Something else about this book--this is what nature writing should be. I am a life long student of and published writer in the genre, but recognize the truth in Joyce Carol Oates' criticism that nature writers display a limited range of emotions (and don't have a sense of humor!). What Galvin has done in The Meadow is make the landscape a character in the story, a challenge that few have risen to and even fewer have succeeded in affecting. Galvin's approach has added a welcome level of complexity to the tale.

This is a real story about several generations of families struggling to survive in a beautiful but harsh landscape in northern Colorado. You can drive through the setting if you take the back-road between Estes Park and Laramie. The book is Western only its setting, otherwise it is innovative in its genre. If you're idea of Western Literature is cowboy and indian stories, look somewhere else.

I have to join the reviewers who objected to the sometimes confusing chronology and character relationships. However, that small caveat cannot take away from the power of this fine book. It was obviously written by a man who loves the land and the people who work it. The sense of place came vividly alive for me and I doubt anyone could withhold admiration for the tough people who give themselves to this rough land. I think this one makes a fitting opposite bookend to David McCumber's book The Cowboy Way, an equally loving look at the travails of modern ranching. Overall, it was a pleasure.

Before I moved to the foothills of Northern Colorado, I had imagined the West to be an amalgamation of images that have, for better or worse, perpetuated the Western Myth: saloon doors and crooked sheriffs, hookers hanging off of poles on hotel porches, horses bucking handsome riders, and throngs of hollow-eyed men wearing suspenders and wide-brimmed hats, their mustaches blanketing unsmiling mouths. These are the pictures I believed in as a boy growing up in the MidWest; these pictures were the truth of the Great Beyond. To me, the West was a perpetual motion picture, a setting for lives of endless action and excitement that ended with a ride into the sunset, if it ever ended.

I am not the only one who has carried this misconception into town. The false romance of the West baited most of the early settlers and trappers, and it still digs its claws into the hearts of Midwestern boys even today. James Galvin, in his beautifully crafted book The Meadow, contradicts this Western idyll and shares instead the stories of an isolated, self-reliant, and occasionally desperate people who inhabit a different West, a country whose moods and whims oppose popular representations. Galvin's unsung West is not glamorous, not cartoonish or flamboyant. It is the Western experience without movie cameras, without damsels in distress, and without sympathy.

Set along the Colorado/Wyoming border, The Meadow follows a peculiar cast of men and women who are trying to create lives out in this sparse and lonely territory across the expanse of the 20th Century. These are stubborn characters, people whose commitment to Home requires patience, compromise, and oftentimes surrender. They are not merely products of their environment, but extensions of it. They wrestle with the land, fighting always against the incessant wind, heavy snow, and meager rainfall that characterizes the eastern foothills of The Rockies. Human relationships are tenuous but vital, as the burden of solitude reigns in this country, miles away from any store, post office, or city.

It is tempting to view this existence as enviable. In our literature, Americans have made heroes of our independent rebels and recluses. We subscribe to the fable that they are the lucky ones, the examples to emulate and worship for their boldness and drive. But this neo-Thoreauvian vision, always enticing to cooped-up modern Americans, often blinds us to the realities endured by the early pioneers. When viewed up close, the independence of many of Galvin's people is burdensome, all of them at the mercy and whim of their adopted geography. There is death by suicide, by cancer, by exposure, by stupidity. This land is nonchalant, heedless of the desires and intentions of its inhabitants. Yet it draws them ever nearer as long as their endurance holds out. Sometimes it holds, other times it doesn't.

An antidote to the struggles and tests of this hard environment is the solace of good work. The trades that are practiced by many of these characters all rely on a traditional knowledge, that is, a knowledge passed down by older generations through hands-on experience and tutelage, not through Books for Dummies or Wikipedia. The skills put to use by Galvin's people make a modern reader pine for old men, for stories and help and wisdom from an earlier time. Lyle, the central character in the book, is a skilled carpenter, farmer, metalsmith, meteorologist, and handyman. With his hands, he builds his own house, his own lathe, his own wheelbarrow, his own tools. Lyle's work seems to be a reaction against the capriciousness of the land, his skill and controlled craftsmanship defying the chaos of chance. By creating his own world of order with his hands, he concocts a convincing illusion of symmetry and sense in his world, no matter how much the natural evidence around him speaks to the contrary.

It would be misleading to say that there is a specific and traceable plot in The Meadow. Reading this book is more like browsing through an old photo album, viewing scenes of familiar people, all wearing faces that seem to defy time. The scenes are disparate from each other and have their own individual import, but their true and final reward culminates when each photograph is taken in together with the others.

Galvin, a poet by trade, treats these scenes with detachment while still staying intimate with the people and with the land. Refreshingly, there is no didactic preaching about the dying of the West or the loss of the old ways of life. This land of no forgiveness is not portrayed any differently than it really is; its uniqueness is in its scarcity and its nakedness. The saccharine language of many other Western writers, desperate to canonize their respective landscapes by using myopic and specious claims, is replaced with an honest and straightforward narration that reflects the spirit of the people Galvin is writing about.

There is love at work here. Love of a place, of a time, and of a people. To call The Meadow an elegy feels too discouraging, too defeating. This is a book of weather and atmospheres, of dreams born and dashed and born again. It is a book of personal history and geographical history, an homage to an uncommon people from whom we can learn much in this busier, louder age. It is a slow book, simultaneously serene and heartbreaking, and it derives its quiet power from this tension. James Galvin has given us an uncommon gift with The Meadow, a gift that hopefully will contribute to the new mythology of a changing West.

Brad Rhoda was born and raised in Michigan and then left with no hard feelings. He now lives and writes in Fort Collins, Colorado, because it is there that he found answers to questions. For the past eight years, he has worked on a farm that uses an agricultural context to help bring healing and health to men struggling with addiction and homelessness. He believes that the reconciliation of farming and conservation will dictate the future direction of the arid West, and much of his work is driven by the hope in that possibility and efforts to expand upon that conversation. He is grateful to live with his wife, daughter, and their good fat dog.

This non-linear piece of prose is elegant in its ability to take us to a place now long-gone. Capturing the life of a meadow on the high plains of the Colorado Wyoming border, Galvin creates a rich and vivid description of life over a 100 year span.
His main character, Lyle, is a true man of the old farming west and a lover of the land as it was. Galvin's ability to create mental pictures of people, land and life makes the book a enthralling read.
Don't expect it to move quickly, although the entire book is done in vignettes. Don't expect to remember all the characters, especially if you lay the book down and don't pick it back up for a few days. Even with these reading challenges, the book is a gift of great writing and a glimpse of the past.

The author tells you in exquisite detail what it is like living in a small isolated ranch in the west through the lives of several persons who occupied a piece of land over the years. The stories are gripping, realistic and (altho fiction) are absolutely true. And it is told by a master; his prose alone is worth the reading -- there is a ton of craft in the writing, but also special gifts. This book is a gem.

One of the most perfect books about the American West I've ever read. Actually, one of the most perfect books I've ever read, period. This is one of the contemporary books that I most admire. And the characters, particularly Lyle, have remained with me vividly. Galvin's novel, Fencing the Sky, is also a great book, more plotted and less lyrical, that people drawn to a more "typical" novel might love. And his poetry? God, don't even let me start. A telling piece of info: I have two copies of both The Meadow and Resurrection Update (his collected poems) so I always have one to give away.