Customer Reviews

Winter Range

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In her stunning novel, WINTER RANGE, Claire Davis takes on some of the most powerful and wrenching issues that confront those who live in the American West today, such as changing economies, the roles of both women and men in farm and ranch economies, continuing migrations--both in and out, and questions about property ownership and responsibility. Although the story can be read as a gripping suspense novel, it also illustrates clearly how there are no easy answers for the complicated and sometimes painful lives of these richly drawn characters. This is a "must read" novel!

The story of "newcomer," Sheriff Ike Parsons, a Wisconsin dairy farmer's son, and one-time big city cop, and his wife, Pattiann, daughter of a local Montanan cattle rancher, has the genuine rawboned flavor of contemporary life in a rural community where life is folksy but complex and the folkways often harmful. "And he (Ike) wondered how long could a man learn, unlearn, and relearn before he came upon the thing that undid him? Storm. Drought, Age. The market. One year you're at home and the next--a stranger to the place you'd made for yourself. And maybe the best you could hope for in those instances was to find yourself, like Chas, still young enough to start over at something else." Claire Davis doesn't waste words, rather she uses them with a poetic vividness. Each line stands rich and firm--all senses are touched--and her similes and metaphores are delightful capturing your imagination and roping you into the scene whether or not you care to be there. Ultimately, your heart thumps like a kettledrum from the symphonic experience, yet you never lose the feel of the harshness of the winter range in east-central Montana. Snuggle up under the Big Sky and savor this one, again and again.

I would think that reviewers for Amazon would have a better developed attention span than the typical Nintendo teenager. Would also expect that he/she would be able to tell the difference between a successful literary novel and a genre thriller. Doesn't seem to be the case here. This reviewer should stick to Grisham, Sparks, etc.

Winter Range is an accomplishment. The novel succeeds at what John Gardner (The Art of Fiction - look it up) terms a sustained and vivid literary dream that the reader can feel as plausable and complete as a representation of the real world. The characters are complex and rounded, not least because of the background that the author gives the reader that makes sense of their actions and behavior, and without appreciably stalling the forward motion of the plot. Chas would be just another cardboard cutout of a villain ( which the reviewer evidently prefers), but with an understanding of the wellsprings of his early life - dogmatic religion, emotional deprivation, etc; he becomes a believable person who reacts to his circumstances in a believable, destructive way. I was especially impressed with his positive qualities - innocence and charm - that made others doubt their negative reactions to him until he set himself apart from the community in an overt way. I liked the Iago-like sense of release and satisfaction he found in acting out his vengeance fantasies.

I also found that the sense of self questioning in Ike to be refreshing and realistic. How many of us can make life and death decisions without reliving that moment again and again? Thats the stuff of "taut thrillers", not life - at least as I know it.

I also loved the exploration of the relationhip that a rancher has with his cattle, and the intensity of emotion that corresponds with that relationship. I still occasionally have one of those nightmares that my cattle are starving and I am responsible and can't get to them - even though I haven't owned a cow in thirty years.

The language of the novel is appropriate, beautiful and spare, the sense of the impact of the weather on the characters was reminiscent of "Snow Falling on Cedars" - a book that this novel is equal to in almost every way. It is well-paced and plotted, sustains interest and explores the communities of the hi-line very well. I can speak here because I was born and raised next to highway 2 in a typical cow-town such as was represented here.

I have a couple of quibbles - Ms Davis, where in the world did you get an elk to that part of the country? The only elk I know of is a half-tame herd in the CMR game range that was planted in the fifties. Wouldn't a yearling steer have done the job? Second - Northeastern Montana is high plains (altitude above 2000 feet), not desert.

Read this novel, it is very rewarding, powerful and deserves all the success that it can garner.

Claire Davis' triumphant debut novel, "Winter Range," is a complex and challenging work. Precisely and elegantly crafted, the novel's setting, the fiercely beautiful and forbidding praire of eastern Montana, unrelentingly batters both the characters and the reader. Focusing on the psychological development of its three central characters, "Winter Range" explores the theme of adult responsibility, especially in the face of trauma, discontent and rebellion. A daunting winter brings to the breaking point the taut tensions between an honorable sheriff, Ike Parsons, his proud but haunted wife Pattiann, and a truly malicious misanthrope, Chas, whose unrequited passion for Pattiann complicates an absorbing conflict between the characters, their own pasts and their abilities to survive an environment seemily indifferent to their circumstances. Ms. Davis provides a powerful and compelling response to her own core question: when do we stop blaming others and begin accepting our lives as our own, as flawed as they may be, for what they truly are?

Ultimately, the author has each character commit to an answer provided by Pattiann as she sorts out the conflicts engendered by a restrictive upbrining and her love of a man whose calm restores her sense of self. "Isn't there a time when a peson has to say, all right, now this is the rest of my life? And I'm accountable fo that?" "Winter Range" picks up momentum throughout its fast-paced narrative, and the conclusion is both liberating and forbidding.

I also feel a need to compliment the author on how hard she worked for the reader. For this is a beautifully crafted piece of literature. She has a marvelous sense of imagery. Take, for example, her description of parents' grief after the death of their child. "And now he was dead and his parents, early in their middle years, would wake the rest of their days and know the relentless taste of grief as sharp and cold on their tongues as metal on a winter's morning." Ms. Davis constantly reinvents the Montana plains, from its fickle abundance to its devastating winters; those who live and work as cattle ranchers receive unspoken, but genuine, homage through her descriptions of their environment.

This dark, brooding and intense novel signals the advent of an accomplished author. In tune with the people she describes, Claire Davis offers us unusual and timely insights into the adult mind.

Paradise isn't lost in Claire Davis's debut novel, "Winter Range" -- but it's damn cold and likely a good day's ride east of Eden, Montana.

Her setting is a frozen Hell in the New West, "a vast, ice-locked landscape" savaged by an unrelenting winter. Her characters are titanically common folks engaged in a power struggle for love , independence, redemption and the future in a windswept, eastern Montana town. And her plot is as old as Genesis, or at least Milton's version of it: a fallen hellion who pursues an imperfect woman's heart and mind as a way to regain his equilibrium, while her virtuous husband struggles to understand and control the world around him.

But "Winter Range" is its own story, fresh and provocative. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff with a reputation for fairness, common sense, and kindness, but an outsider whose roots haven't yet sunk deep enough in Montana's soil. Like most folks in town, he knows Chas Stubblefield has fallen on hard times in the bleak winter, but the profound horror of it doesn't come clear until he sees Stubblefield's ranch on a bitterly cold night: starving cattle and horses freezing where they stand, grotesque mounds of snow hiding the carcasses of the dead. When he returns in the light of day to offer help, he finds a brooding Stubblefield near bankruptcy, living off the meat of his dying herd, too angry to see a way out and too proud to accept help.

Chas is blinded to his own failings as a rancher. Bankers and suppliers have cut off his credit, and Chas's venom for them is poisoning his mind. "Better to reign in Hell," Milton said in a passage favored by the troubled Chas, "than to serve in Heaven." Between them is Pattiann Parsons, Ike's young, headstrong wife. She's a local ranch girl with a rebellious streak and a promiscuous past, which includes a sexual relationship with Chas -- a small detail she's hidden from her husband. She sees neither a devil nor a saint in Chas, and while remaining loyal to her husband, she surrenders to a perverse, nostalgic compassion for her one-time lover. Embittered by her father's decision to cede the family ranch to her brother, Pattiann still has strong ties to the land -- and all the human conflicts that arise from it.

Davis's literary ethos rivals Larry Watson, Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. And "Winter Range" might be an even more poetic example of the new Western literature, in which landscape, climate and the earth make an indelible mark upon the human character. Its vivid details -- nicks in the local tavern's bar from eager silver dollars, the warm numbness inflicted by a rifle's recoil against a man's shoulder, the stinking steam rising from a hungry coyote's mangy back -- prove Davis is a writer who both embraces and transcends the boundaries of Western regional literature.

Davis is earthy and as expansive as the Big Sky itself, but still poetic and evocative.

I hope that nobody was deterred from buying this book by the absurd Amazon editorial review which dismissed it as "big and empty, just like the state of Montana". Those of us who live in the state take offense at such comments. I would also like to point out to this reviewer (who notes, with seeming derision, that starving cattle is "apparently a crime in Montana") that animal neglect and cruelty happen to be crimes in all 50 states, not just in the "empty" ones.

That said, let me tell you why Winter Range is worth your time. First of all, it's a very good read --highly compelling. THe plot revolves around the conflict between a small town sheriff and a failed rancher, but Davis peels back layer upon layer to show us that the roots of this conflict run much deeper than these two men. In fact, the conflict strikes at the heart of an entire community, and an entire (dying) way of life.

I have spent the past five years working in tiny towns and rural areas of Montana, and the tension between the townspeople and the "outsider" sheriff in this story really struck a chord with me. I think Davis has realistically captured the attitude of small town Westerners towards newcomers, while managing to evoke sympathy for both sides.

This book is well-written, original, full of tension, and it leaves you with something to think about after you're finished. WHat more could you ask of a novel? THe only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 is that I think the author fell just short of reaching the full potential of this story. At times, it seemed she wasn't sure what kind of story she wanted to tell. This book has all the elements of a terrific thriller, yet Davis purposefully (I think) detracts from the dramatic tension by digressing into long psychological explorations of her characters. It's almost as if she was embarassed to write a straight-up thriller because she is a talented writer and talented writers are only supposed to write 'literary' novels. Yet I think she could have let this novel be the fast-paced nail-biter it was meant to be, and her top-notch writing and characterization would have still made it stand apart from the rest of that genre.

But this was only her first novel, and it is much, much better than most first attempts. Highly recommended, whether you're looking for excellent writing or a good old-fashioned page-turner.

I finished Winter Range a week ago and I still find myself thinking about the characters and the landscape. These people are real. I found myself torn between wanting to know what was going to happen (read fast, read faster!) and wanting to enjoy the sentences (read slower, read it again). I finally decided just to read it twice.

This is a contemporary literary western, as its title implies, but it is also a love story, a meditation on animal rights, and a study of the values of a small community. The author has a gift of dialog and writes beautiful descriptive passages.

It's interesting to compare the history and sense of identity of Pattiann, one of the author's main characters in here, with that of Judy Blunt, author of the memoir, BREAKING CLEAN. Blunt's memoir is an excellent tandem read, and in the front of the book she provides us with a map which comes in handy reading either book.

Blunt is also the first person the author thanks on the acknowledgments page, but I can also see the influences here of William Kittredge's HOLE IN THE SKY and OWNING IT ALL, and perhaps some of Pam Houston's COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS. Also, there are some interesting contrasts in here to Alan LeMay's novel by the same title, WINTER RANGE, published back in 1932.

Claire Davis's WINTER RANGE, however, is still distinctly the author's creation and wondrously beautiful and compelling it is. Overlooked for major awards during its year, it was still good enough to be selected for discussion by the FRESH INK READING GROUP at Readerville and made for an interesting month. Five Stars.

The problem with having a day job is further exacerbated by books like WINTER RANGE. I stayed up way too late reading this wonderful novel, drank too much coffee and slept through my alarm. Read this book!

Some may object to mixing genres, but I found this mix of psychological thriller and literary novel about small town/ranch country life really absorbing. The tension that builds in it is intense, as it's hard to anticipate just what extremes of behavior the author is going to permit her characters. That the characters are fully three-dimensional and believable adds to that intensity. Unlike "Snow Falling on Cedars," which is an easy page turner, I found myself able to read only a chapter of this novel at a time. The prose is often poetic, and the internal explorations of character, feelings and motives, are meant to be absorbed slowly and deliberately. I often put down the book after a particularly chilling or revelatory scene with almost a reluctance to go on because the knowledge of characters and their intentions was so raw.

This is a dark and beautifully told story about a rural community, set in its ways and distrustful of outsiders. Values have been shaped by generations of struggle to make a living from cattle and agriculture, which are at the mercy of the weather, markets, time, chance, and accident. Government and, to an extent, the law are regarded as impositions on a natural order that took shape over a century ago. Ike, the sheriff, is thrust in the middle of that conflict between old and new, and the decisions he has to make are complicated by his marriage to a local ranch girl with a reputation for being "wild" in her youth. Anyone with intelligence and single-minded rebelliousness who has grown up in that kind of environment and has chosen to stay will understand the ambivalence of his wife wife, Pattiann. Anyone reading the headlines of shooters in shopping malls will recognize the blinding rage of Chas, who has no more compassion for himself than he does for his victims, which include his cattle and his horse. His goading of Ike is equal parts revenge and suicide. I highly recommend this immensely rewarding and beautifully crafted novel. Readers will also enjoy Larry Watson's "White Crosses" and Kent Meyers' "The Work of Wolves."