Clear Title: A Novel

by Grace Stone Coates, Caroline Patterson (Introduction), Shana Harrington (Editor)

In 1931, Alfred A. Knopf published Grace Stone Coates’ first novel, Black Cherries, made up of a series of linked stories. In her introduction to the 2003 reprint of Black Cherries, Mary Clearman Blew wrote that Coates wasn’t entirely satisfied with the novel, noting that perhaps “a more coherent book would have been a more revealing book.” Clear Title, written soon after the publication of Black Cherries, may be that more coherent book—it certainly tells a more revealing story. Just as Black Cherries reveals, in Blew’s words, a “family caught in a web of tension so acute that it binds them inexorably even as it separates them,” Clear Title tells the story of the same family, but more directly, revealing the secrets, lies, and betrayals that created that painful web. In her introduction to Clear Title, Caroline Patterson—editor of the award-winning anthology, Montana Women A Geography of the Heart—writes, “Clear Title is a frank exploration of power in the moral, sexual, intellectual, and legal power between a husband and a wife. . . . By the end of the book, the power in the family has shifted. . . . Instead of a father ruling the roost, we see three sisters, traveling as equals, released . . . from the rigidity and anger of the past.” Drumlummon Institute now makes this powerful, heartbreaking novel available to readers already passionate about Coates’ writing and life. Clear Title is Grace Stone Coates’ last remaining major work still unpublished.

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2014

Reviews

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the typical Western story. More an unforgiving look at human nature and the life back in the late 1800's. The writing is distinctive. It is not as sparse as some other Western writers but still evokes that same melancholy.