(Note the rumpled-bedsheet background. We've had company on our couch the past few days, hence the lack of bloggage.)
Took a trip down to J. W. Doull used bookstore last weekend and although I didn't find any of the summer book club picks, the initial reason for my visit, I did leave with a few other good finds: Wallace Stegner's essay collection Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West; Lawrence Thornton's novel Imagining Argentina, set during the years of the "disappeareds" in the 1970s and 80s; and A Piece of My Heart, some earlier Richard Ford I've had on my list for a while.
While waiting for my book club parcel from Powell's to arrive (I'm feeling awfully conscious of having introduced book club here and not yet begun the reading -- a common book club ailment, I've heard) I got started on the Stegner. It's a combination of natural history, desert politics (water usage, dams, parks), and a scan of the region's literature. I'm starting to feel pretty at home in these cruises through lists of Southwest authors. There's something pretty satisfying in getting your footing in a new territory, particularly when the reading is entirely extra-curricular.
Although I came to Stegner's work via the Southwest route, in reading this collection I've discovered (belatedly) that his family lived in Eastend, Saskatchewan, near the Cypress Hills, for about five years between 1914 and 1920. If they'd had another good year or two farming he might have stayed for good. He's written about the Cypress Hills area in his book Wolf Willow, and I just (just this minute) discovered that a group of writers actually purchased the house his father built and operate it as an artist retreat, much like Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, NS. Huh.
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