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Utah Reflections: Stories From the Wasatch Front
Perhaps no other area of Utah reflects the state's expansive diversity as clearly as the Wasatch Front. Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front" captures the heritage and identity of this self-defining part of the state. These personal stories are grounded in the mountains, waters, deserts and cities of a distinctive geography, from Cache Valley to Salt Lake City to Provo. Contributors include Lance Larson, Katharine Coles, Phyllis Barber, Sylvia Torti, Chadd VanZanten, Pam Houston and Terry Tempest Williams, as well as other exciting established and new voices. Each piece was thoughtfully selected as part of a sweeping panorama of cultural history and the traditions of a people bound to the region to show what makes the Wasatch Front unique, prosperous and beloved."
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2014
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 18, 2017
I love stories in which place is clearly described, alive, and either supports or creates the characters. A story that could "happen anywhere" feels bland and unmoored. The book that most impacted and impressed me recently was the late Ellen Meloy's The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky. Since then, I've actively sought out essays and stories that feature specific places or make place a character.
The Wasatch Front is a sociological construct dictated, in part, by geography. The Front is a 120-mile-long string of cities and towns strung like beads along north-central Utah. Hemmed in by the Wasatch Mountains to the west and the Great Salt Lake to the east, the average width of the Front is about five miles wide. Within this strip of land live 80% of the state's population, some 2 million people. The term Wasatch Front is regional, unknown to most of the county whose total knowledge of Utah likely consists of a mish-mash of sports, pop culture, and political sound bites: 2002 Olympics, Sundance, Mitt Romney, the LDS church, silly so-called reality TV shows about polygamy, etc. When we don’t know much about a place or its people, we tend to stereotype the population, to stamp everyone in that area with a kind of cultural cookie cutter and set them apart as "them" to plug into the them versus us equation.
As the stories in this book show, the people who make up this region are not cookie-cutter people. They do not live cookie cutter lives. They do not think cookie cutter thoughts. This collection of 15 short stories, poems and photographs is neither bland nor unmoored. Whether currently living in the area or not, each of the authors describes how the Wasatch Front shaped an experience or relationship, how it has become part of who they are and affects what they offer others through their art.
Stories I especially liked included “Spiral Jetty,” The Pit Bull and the Mountain Goat,” and “The Curling Fingers of the Hatch Women.”
To the editors, I say, "More, please."
The Wasatch Front is a sociological construct dictated, in part, by geography. The Front is a 120-mile-long string of cities and towns strung like beads along north-central Utah. Hemmed in by the Wasatch Mountains to the west and the Great Salt Lake to the east, the average width of the Front is about five miles wide. Within this strip of land live 80% of the state's population, some 2 million people. The term Wasatch Front is regional, unknown to most of the county whose total knowledge of Utah likely consists of a mish-mash of sports, pop culture, and political sound bites: 2002 Olympics, Sundance, Mitt Romney, the LDS church, silly so-called reality TV shows about polygamy, etc. When we don’t know much about a place or its people, we tend to stereotype the population, to stamp everyone in that area with a kind of cultural cookie cutter and set them apart as "them" to plug into the them versus us equation.
As the stories in this book show, the people who make up this region are not cookie-cutter people. They do not live cookie cutter lives. They do not think cookie cutter thoughts. This collection of 15 short stories, poems and photographs is neither bland nor unmoored. Whether currently living in the area or not, each of the authors describes how the Wasatch Front shaped an experience or relationship, how it has become part of who they are and affects what they offer others through their art.
Stories I especially liked included “Spiral Jetty,” The Pit Bull and the Mountain Goat,” and “The Curling Fingers of the Hatch Women.”
To the editors, I say, "More, please."
June 29, 2022
Pleasant stories from all walks of Utah life and landscapes. We read it in the car as we drove around Utah to various things, which the short stories are well-suited for, and it was fun to share place with the authors.
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March 3, 2015One of my greatest pleasures in life is to walk from my apartment near the Governor’s Mansion to the far corner of the City Cemetery (just below 11th Ave) and sit. I call it my "Power Spot.” I never seem to tire of gazing out at the valley and the mountains—especially the mountains. They always change a little from day to day yet remain reassuringly the same, like the face of an old friend.
Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front , edited by Sherri H. Hoffman, Kase Johnstun & Mary Johnstun, collects 15 short essays and a poem written by a variety of people who at one time or another have called the Wasatch Front (or Back) home. As you might expect from a region settled primarily by Latter-Day Saints, accounts of family life fill most of the pages in this collection. The hardships and joys related therein just might bring you to tears. Other essays feature the mountains and waterways of the Wasatch Front as more direct participants. One author, a climber, puts it this way: "When I'm coiling the rope at the base, there's a hush that surrounds me, and I find that if I'm very quiet I can hear these walls humming the song of the earth" (p. 110).
This reviewer’s top three Utah reflections are “The Pit Bull and the Mountain Goat” by Pam Houston, “The Curling Fingers of the Hatch Women” by Jana Richman, and “The Wasatch Front and Back” by Stevan Allred. I’m sure you will have your own favorites.
—Tony Guerrero, Librarian at the Sprague Branch
Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front , edited by Sherri H. Hoffman, Kase Johnstun & Mary Johnstun, collects 15 short essays and a poem written by a variety of people who at one time or another have called the Wasatch Front (or Back) home. As you might expect from a region settled primarily by Latter-Day Saints, accounts of family life fill most of the pages in this collection. The hardships and joys related therein just might bring you to tears. Other essays feature the mountains and waterways of the Wasatch Front as more direct participants. One author, a climber, puts it this way: "When I'm coiling the rope at the base, there's a hush that surrounds me, and I find that if I'm very quiet I can hear these walls humming the song of the earth" (p. 110).
This reviewer’s top three Utah reflections are “The Pit Bull and the Mountain Goat” by Pam Houston, “The Curling Fingers of the Hatch Women” by Jana Richman, and “The Wasatch Front and Back” by Stevan Allred. I’m sure you will have your own favorites.
—Tony Guerrero, Librarian at the Sprague Branch
April 13, 2017
I picked this up for the Pam Houston and Terry Tempest Williams and their stories were good, but there were a few by unknown to me authors that I enjoyed just as much and related to even more. There was a story of climbing in Little Cottonwood, fly fishing, the hands of the Hatch women, and visiting the Spiral Jetty. Some were great, some were good, but living here and reading them, none were bad.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews