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The Willow Field
Annie Dillard has called him “one of our finest writers.” Jane Smiley has declared his voice “prophetic.” Now, at long last—after two collections of stories, another two of essays, and the heralded memoir A Hole in the Sky —William Kittredge gives us his first novel: an epic that stretches over the twentieth century, from the settlers, cowboys, and gamblers who opened up this country to the landholders and politicians who ran it.
Rossie Benasco’s horseback existence begins when he’s fifteen and culminates in a thousand-mile drive of more than two hundred head of horses through the Rockies into Calgary, through Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, across virgin wilderness, failed homesteads, ghost towns, squatters’ camps, and Indian settlements. It’s a journey that leads him, ultimately, to Eliza Stevenson and a love so powerful that his vocational aimlessness is focused only by his desire to spend his life with her: whether on her family ranch in the Bitterroot, which will prove their best refuge from a century fraught with war and civil strife, or on sojourns in Hawaii and Guam during World War II, or in the horse-trading business in California, or on the campaign trail throughout Montana.
A novel rich with landscapes and characters, The Willow Field chronicles a way of life nearly extinct at the novel’s beginning and surviving only in memory upon its close at century’s end. And as these people pivot between the ghosts of the old frontier and the modern world that engulfs them—from the uprooted lives of the Blackfeet tribes left listless and betrayed to the ravages of war, McCarthyism, urban riots, and insidious land development—the perennial imperatives of ambition, responsibility, and love prove as vital as ever, revealed as they are with the conviction, humor, and humanity for which Kittredge has long been acclaimed.
Rossie Benasco’s horseback existence begins when he’s fifteen and culminates in a thousand-mile drive of more than two hundred head of horses through the Rockies into Calgary, through Oregon, Idaho, and Montana, across virgin wilderness, failed homesteads, ghost towns, squatters’ camps, and Indian settlements. It’s a journey that leads him, ultimately, to Eliza Stevenson and a love so powerful that his vocational aimlessness is focused only by his desire to spend his life with her: whether on her family ranch in the Bitterroot, which will prove their best refuge from a century fraught with war and civil strife, or on sojourns in Hawaii and Guam during World War II, or in the horse-trading business in California, or on the campaign trail throughout Montana.
A novel rich with landscapes and characters, The Willow Field chronicles a way of life nearly extinct at the novel’s beginning and surviving only in memory upon its close at century’s end. And as these people pivot between the ghosts of the old frontier and the modern world that engulfs them—from the uprooted lives of the Blackfeet tribes left listless and betrayed to the ravages of war, McCarthyism, urban riots, and insidious land development—the perennial imperatives of ambition, responsibility, and love prove as vital as ever, revealed as they are with the conviction, humor, and humanity for which Kittredge has long been acclaimed.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2006
11 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
William Kittredge
49 books26 followersWilliam Kittredge was born in 1932 in Portland, Oregon.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
October 27, 2015
This, the author's first epic novel is about a life of a man spanning a century. He starts out his life in Nevada in the very early nineteen hundreds and works as a buckaroo herding horses to Canada. There he meets a girl who brings him to Montana where he completes the rest of his life. He becomes a polatition but fails. His love remains with the land and horse flesh for all of his life.
I recommend this book to all.
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond
I recommend this book to all.
Enjoy and Be Blessed.
Diamond
August 20, 2009
This book is very promising at the start, causing me to wax rhapsodic in comparing Kittredge's writing to that of the best of Doig, almost in a class with Cormac McCarthy or Wendell Berry among writers of the American West. Alas, this novel could only hold up to such comparisons for the first third, and then it peters out into a litany of mediocrity.
Our hero, Rossie, is a city boy enamored of horses, and Kittredge has a skill with language in his description of this fascination and how it plays out. Even through Rossie's love affair with a girl named Mattie, the author sustains a lightness of tone and a logic of thought in his characters that is appealing. But after helping drive a herd of horses to Canada, Rossie encounters Eliza, and it's all downhill from there.
One of the problems central to this book is that all the characters speak in semi-poetic aphorisms, many of which really mean little or nothing. Even buckaroos sound like back alley philosophers. No one seems to want to simply speak in straightforward language. Were this merely an aberration of certain characters and fit their personalities, this would not be bothersome, and might in fact be quite amusing or interesting (witness the Judge in McCarthy's Blood Meridian). But when everyone is speaking this odd, eliptical language, it becomes merely annoying. It also feels in many cases to be dishonest; some of these people simply would not speak in the words they have been given to say.
But the most basic issue here is that, after Rossie meets up with Eliza, the remaining two-thirds of the book reads like one long denouement, wherein Kittredge seems to feel the need to fill us in on what happens to every member of this sprawling family to which he has introduced us, but does not give us a chance to see them actually becoming who they are. Thus, Rossie's children are no sooner born than they are grown. Rossie himself no sooner decides to stay with Eliza then he is middle-aged and stodgy. Eliza's parents no sooner intrigue us then they are old and dying. It seems that Kittredge has made the common error of needing to complete the narrative rather than telling us stories about characters we can truly care about. Who cares if we find out what happens to each and every one? He could learn a great deal, it seems to me, from the likes of Berry, with his long, languid descriptions of place and person, or from McCarthy and his loving, caressing feel for landscape and emotion. He also needs to learn to make choices about character so we remain interested; Rossie and Eliza really are not very nice or interesting people. They are rich, they drink too much, they argue pointlessly, and that's about it. Who wants to read about that?
Our hero, Rossie, is a city boy enamored of horses, and Kittredge has a skill with language in his description of this fascination and how it plays out. Even through Rossie's love affair with a girl named Mattie, the author sustains a lightness of tone and a logic of thought in his characters that is appealing. But after helping drive a herd of horses to Canada, Rossie encounters Eliza, and it's all downhill from there.
One of the problems central to this book is that all the characters speak in semi-poetic aphorisms, many of which really mean little or nothing. Even buckaroos sound like back alley philosophers. No one seems to want to simply speak in straightforward language. Were this merely an aberration of certain characters and fit their personalities, this would not be bothersome, and might in fact be quite amusing or interesting (witness the Judge in McCarthy's Blood Meridian). But when everyone is speaking this odd, eliptical language, it becomes merely annoying. It also feels in many cases to be dishonest; some of these people simply would not speak in the words they have been given to say.
But the most basic issue here is that, after Rossie meets up with Eliza, the remaining two-thirds of the book reads like one long denouement, wherein Kittredge seems to feel the need to fill us in on what happens to every member of this sprawling family to which he has introduced us, but does not give us a chance to see them actually becoming who they are. Thus, Rossie's children are no sooner born than they are grown. Rossie himself no sooner decides to stay with Eliza then he is middle-aged and stodgy. Eliza's parents no sooner intrigue us then they are old and dying. It seems that Kittredge has made the common error of needing to complete the narrative rather than telling us stories about characters we can truly care about. Who cares if we find out what happens to each and every one? He could learn a great deal, it seems to me, from the likes of Berry, with his long, languid descriptions of place and person, or from McCarthy and his loving, caressing feel for landscape and emotion. He also needs to learn to make choices about character so we remain interested; Rossie and Eliza really are not very nice or interesting people. They are rich, they drink too much, they argue pointlessly, and that's about it. Who wants to read about that?
June 22, 2025
A lyrical, saddle-jumping romp of a Western, that turns political in it's last third. From the opening line The Willow Field speaks in an amusing, rangy, cowboy tone. Crisp dialogue and big-sky atmosphere puts the reader in the cold open air of 1930’s American West.
This is not a shoot-em-up Western, but still an adventurous one that entertains and transport to a simpler time. Two very strong female characters move and speak with a much greater power than our protagonist Ross Benasco, but he calms them and they motivate him. Western purists may not love the ending but I did. Messages of hope carry the story to a contemplative finale.
Recommended - Kittredge is an author worth trying.
This is not a shoot-em-up Western, but still an adventurous one that entertains and transport to a simpler time. Two very strong female characters move and speak with a much greater power than our protagonist Ross Benasco, but he calms them and they motivate him. Western purists may not love the ending but I did. Messages of hope carry the story to a contemplative finale.
Recommended - Kittredge is an author worth trying.
April 6, 2018
What an amazing writer -- what a shame this novel is so salacious. I'll stick to his nonfiction.
April 29, 2022
Being in Montana while I read this story of life in the west, was just about perfect. Wm Kittredge crafts a fine tale of coming of age for two very different young people in the early 20th century. Laced with history from the same early 20th century era adds to the actions of the people he describes, be it dirt poor or wealthy, these are turbulent times in US history.
April 25, 2016
To understand William Kittredge’s The Willow Field one first has to read his masterpiece memoir Hole in the Sky and Wallace Stegner’s Big Rock Candy Mountain (Mr. Kittredge was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford). Even reading the first chapter of Hole in the Sky conveys a deeply thoughtful philosophy about the meaning of one’s life. In that chapter Kittredge says that perhaps the purpose of our lives is connected with the pleasure of simply repeating the names of those things which become sacred to us as a result of a life-long familiarity such as in Kittredge’s case the names of the thousands of waterfowl that crossed his grandfather’s ranch when he was a boy. The second book which sheds light on The Willow Field, Big Rock Candy Mountain, is not plot-driven it simply tells a life which is deeply connected with the land where Stegner grew up and which allows the reader to extract whatever meaning he wants from Stegner’s view of true life. There is a recurring image at the end of Stegner’s book that of a bird of prey eating a snake. Stegner’s character wonders if that image he remembered so vividly from childhood might not symbolize the importance of the physical world which gives a kind of simple meaning to our lives. The implication is that the physical world and our memories of it need not be supplemented by extraneous philosophical ideas in order for our lives to have existential meaning. We may be here on earth simply to witness and to marvel at this incredible world we have been given. Many of the complaints about The Willow Field I have read on this site seem to be about the book’s meandering pace. Some readers have been puzzled to understand what the author is getting at. Having taken Mr. Kittredge’s writing courses I can guarantee you that each of those meanders has a purpose. The author is not moving in the structure of a normal problem to resolution plot. I believe this novel is more like the reporting of a life stretching from about 1914 through the 20th century. It reflects the importance of love and within love the importance of having a mate who constantly pushes one to greater positive achievements.
Another theme of the book is a reflection on the politics of the 20th century. His main character seems to be a witness to the sad propensity of the American body politic to want instant fixes and to want never to have to think about complex ideas. Other reviewers scoffed at some of the bawdiness among the horsemen and women of the West. I think they are ill-informed from experience about the rough direct bawdiness of the Wild West as it continued to exist through the period of this novel. Mr. Kittredge grew up on a ranch that controlled many thousands of acres of ranch land. He rode with the roughneck cowboys and is well-acquainted with their ways.
The Willow Field tells the story of two main characters who are, in fact, quite different. These two characters represent the quintessential male force and the quintessential female force. They are able by constant power struggles, conflict, and compromise to form a beautiful unity whose achievements are far beyond what they could have done separately. The main character looks back on his life in the last scene and considers it to have been the greatest good luck to have met and stuck with his wife. There is a beautiful sentence which ends the book and continues the theme of wonder which we feel about the objects and causes which have been important to the main characters. The main character’s son wonders how his father, and by extension, all the people with whom they are connected has been able to reach the last days of his life and manage to heal all the abrasions which have been received and dealt out. I think this summarizes the author’s belief which he has tried to flesh out in his book, that life and this physical world is a sacred wonder, that love is everything, and that we humans, if we move towards positive intention, are an incredibly resilient people who can, as Richard Hugo says, “eat stone and go on.”
Another theme of the book is a reflection on the politics of the 20th century. His main character seems to be a witness to the sad propensity of the American body politic to want instant fixes and to want never to have to think about complex ideas. Other reviewers scoffed at some of the bawdiness among the horsemen and women of the West. I think they are ill-informed from experience about the rough direct bawdiness of the Wild West as it continued to exist through the period of this novel. Mr. Kittredge grew up on a ranch that controlled many thousands of acres of ranch land. He rode with the roughneck cowboys and is well-acquainted with their ways.
The Willow Field tells the story of two main characters who are, in fact, quite different. These two characters represent the quintessential male force and the quintessential female force. They are able by constant power struggles, conflict, and compromise to form a beautiful unity whose achievements are far beyond what they could have done separately. The main character looks back on his life in the last scene and considers it to have been the greatest good luck to have met and stuck with his wife. There is a beautiful sentence which ends the book and continues the theme of wonder which we feel about the objects and causes which have been important to the main characters. The main character’s son wonders how his father, and by extension, all the people with whom they are connected has been able to reach the last days of his life and manage to heal all the abrasions which have been received and dealt out. I think this summarizes the author’s belief which he has tried to flesh out in his book, that life and this physical world is a sacred wonder, that love is everything, and that we humans, if we move towards positive intention, are an incredibly resilient people who can, as Richard Hugo says, “eat stone and go on.”
December 27, 2019
I have a bad habit which really hurt this time: I don’t put down a book that goes sour, and this one did.
The “epic” plot is about as banal as it gets. The characters are thin. The “historical” parts read like they were copied and pasted from Wikipedia (leading me to stop and check at one point!).
And to work Reverend Maclean and his two sons into this? Cheap.
Pregnant women didn’t talk about the dangers of drinking in the 30s. Mothers didn’t talk about the dangers of smoking around children in the 30s. Ray Charles didn’t record “I Can’t Stop Loving You” until 1962, so there’s no way the protagonist was listening to it in 1954. You know, checking Wikipedia might’ve helped after all.
The last seventy pages are a whirlwind like a survey history course.
I was hoping for more. As others have said, I didn’t want to be told. I wanted to be shown.
The “epic” plot is about as banal as it gets. The characters are thin. The “historical” parts read like they were copied and pasted from Wikipedia (leading me to stop and check at one point!).
And to work Reverend Maclean and his two sons into this? Cheap.
Pregnant women didn’t talk about the dangers of drinking in the 30s. Mothers didn’t talk about the dangers of smoking around children in the 30s. Ray Charles didn’t record “I Can’t Stop Loving You” until 1962, so there’s no way the protagonist was listening to it in 1954. You know, checking Wikipedia might’ve helped after all.
The last seventy pages are a whirlwind like a survey history course.
I was hoping for more. As others have said, I didn’t want to be told. I wanted to be shown.
December 24, 2007
This book started out good, but after the first third I thought the dialog got too wordy without really saying anything I found interesting, and I didn't enjoy the last part of the book. I also thought the main characters used the f-word way too much and in an unrealistic manner for the dates the story was set in...that was distracting to me.
Read
December 10, 2007i couldn't get through this. i quit after about 100 pages. i skimmed the rest. it wasn't worth finishing. i never felt connected to the characters. there was nothing sympathetic in any of them that didn't feel forced.
August 2, 2009
You watch out. There's only so many. You can miss all the boats.
Gods live in mountains.
Theorists like Ezra Pound say that verbs and not nouns are real. Sounds like the theory of a man too long cooped up in England, but nevertheless…
That remark generated another round of martinis.
Gods live in mountains.
Theorists like Ezra Pound say that verbs and not nouns are real. Sounds like the theory of a man too long cooped up in England, but nevertheless…
That remark generated another round of martinis.
March 31, 2009
I wish I could give this zero stars. Worst book I've read in a long time. Boring, pointless, and pretentious. Every character spoke with exactly the same voice. Bah.
November 9, 2010
NICE STORY IN THE BEGINNING - BUT NOTHING WAS HAPPENING TO KEEP ME READING.
August 30, 2011
First of the Nature of Words books. It was an effort to read. Although interesting, at times I felt like the author was talking to me instead of through the characters.
June 10, 2024
This book isn't what I expected it to be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It follows the life of Rossie Benasco through his teenage years and into his adult life. Starting in Reno, he joins an outfit and becomes a "buckaroo." It's about 1910 and the last years of what we think of as the cowboy. He makes his way to Canada, then down to Montana. He meets women, also men. The times change, and he changes with them. This book encapsulates the drastic shift in America in the the 20th century. And after, when the trains then cars replaced the horse as a means of travel, there is remembering of times long gone, but no mourning. It is simply a life, a privileged life, lived. Don't carry expectations into the reading of this book. Don't try to connect with the characters. Just read it and appreciate it for what it is.
July 22, 2019
The Willow Field is both a beautifully written history of our American West and a complicated love story of women and horses. It is a heartwarming story of a young man, Rossie, who sets out to discover his destiny by driving cattle across Canada in the summer. He learns a lot about himself, life, friendship, hardship, and love. The saga can be related to:
the relationships in life and how they impact your choices;
your choices and the way you end up living;
the family relationships from those you are born into to those you marry into and how they change over time and your reactions to them;
or the political scene in America and the world from 1920 through 1960.
So much for discussion. What a treasure Kittredge has written and shared with us.
the relationships in life and how they impact your choices;
your choices and the way you end up living;
the family relationships from those you are born into to those you marry into and how they change over time and your reactions to them;
or the political scene in America and the world from 1920 through 1960.
So much for discussion. What a treasure Kittredge has written and shared with us.
March 3, 2024
Loved the book. A story of the old west, cattle drives, bad people and good people, white, Indian, and black.. And great story of a man- Rossie Benasco -overcoming obstacles: "Do it my way."
Going to try and find some more books by Kittredge. Raymond Carver recommended him.
My only criticism is that toward the end the author - through Rossi - turns toward the "politic." He sees Montana changing and he doesn't like it. I tend to agree with him but it is a significant turn.
Going to try and find some more books by Kittredge. Raymond Carver recommended him.
My only criticism is that toward the end the author - through Rossi - turns toward the "politic." He sees Montana changing and he doesn't like it. I tend to agree with him but it is a significant turn.
November 13, 2024
I liked this book particularly for its depiction of the grandeur of the west and also for its description of the kinds of people who have come to inhabit Montana. The characters are not always well drawn but they serve well as types in the author’s attempt to illustrate the way Montana has developed. It is sometimes pretty evident that this is a novel written by an essayist.
August 10, 2019
Loved this novel of the West. There are no huge dramatic highs and lows, but the more normal small progressions of a boy coming of age in the rural West. A story written without rose-colored glass or grandiosity.
May 25, 2020
DNF at 10%. Just totally not my style... I wasn’t connecting to any characters or the plot. It feels like someone just telling you a very boring long winded story you can’t really bring yourself to care about. So I’m not gonna waste my time with this one.
October 14, 2017
very uneven--some gorgeous moments, and then blah.
May 3, 2019
Not too bad a read.. there's a bit of dischronicity in this book..
May 17, 2024
(9/4/11)
October 22, 2009
Tears were shed over this book. But I need to stop doing that. Not shedding tears for books (no, that is what I live for), but I need to stop judging books in such simple terms. Being a "page-turner" or a "tear-jerker" is a nice quality in a book, but luckily for me these qualities are not rare, and they are certainly not illuminating.
So. I loved The Willow Field by Michael Kittredge and it made me cry, but that is not what I want to tell you about it. Nor does it particularly matter that I took a workshop four months ago led by the author, and that he's an eccentric and insightful old bat, though I do mention it with pride, especially now that I know what a good writer he is.
No, the important thing to say about The Willow Field is that, embedded in a great though not unusual story composed of lovely and unusual prose, is a lesson that I hadn't yet learned. Or if I had learned it before, it didn't matter because this time it struck me anew. (And it seems like being alive is starting to consist of learning the same couple of things over and over.)
The story starts out with our protagonist, Rossie Benasco, the son of a Portugese card shark from Reno, setting off on a cattle drive northward through the western states, a la Lonesome Dove. As a result of a random occurrence or two, he meets the love of his life, and they settle in the mystical land of Montana. To simplify egregiously, the rest of the novel takes us through the ensuing sixty years up to the modern day. But more useful to the reader than the story that meanders through decades is the premise behind it. As Eliza, the wife, realized near the end of the novel, each small choice they made stemmed from a whim but solidified into irreversible history. "Those deals, which had started has makeshift, she understood, were now their lives." Such is the terrible power of the remembering human being.
But constantly at odds with this scary notion, is a serene simplicity that pervades the book and is, in my view, victorious. (Hence the tears, probably.) Since there is no escaping the permanence of our actions, let us do what speaks to us truly and gently, because what else can you do? An exchange between Rossie and his old friend Leonard:
" 'But I wonder. I was educated to believe that electricity is fundamental to the way nature behaves. So the flutter of electricity zapping around in our cortex is the essence of what's real. Seems like gods could live in the connections between our synapses. Where else?'
'For Christ's sake,' Rossie said. 'Let's go down and look at the horses.' "
So. I loved The Willow Field by Michael Kittredge and it made me cry, but that is not what I want to tell you about it. Nor does it particularly matter that I took a workshop four months ago led by the author, and that he's an eccentric and insightful old bat, though I do mention it with pride, especially now that I know what a good writer he is.
No, the important thing to say about The Willow Field is that, embedded in a great though not unusual story composed of lovely and unusual prose, is a lesson that I hadn't yet learned. Or if I had learned it before, it didn't matter because this time it struck me anew. (And it seems like being alive is starting to consist of learning the same couple of things over and over.)
The story starts out with our protagonist, Rossie Benasco, the son of a Portugese card shark from Reno, setting off on a cattle drive northward through the western states, a la Lonesome Dove. As a result of a random occurrence or two, he meets the love of his life, and they settle in the mystical land of Montana. To simplify egregiously, the rest of the novel takes us through the ensuing sixty years up to the modern day. But more useful to the reader than the story that meanders through decades is the premise behind it. As Eliza, the wife, realized near the end of the novel, each small choice they made stemmed from a whim but solidified into irreversible history. "Those deals, which had started has makeshift, she understood, were now their lives." Such is the terrible power of the remembering human being.
But constantly at odds with this scary notion, is a serene simplicity that pervades the book and is, in my view, victorious. (Hence the tears, probably.) Since there is no escaping the permanence of our actions, let us do what speaks to us truly and gently, because what else can you do? An exchange between Rossie and his old friend Leonard:
" 'But I wonder. I was educated to believe that electricity is fundamental to the way nature behaves. So the flutter of electricity zapping around in our cortex is the essence of what's real. Seems like gods could live in the connections between our synapses. Where else?'
'For Christ's sake,' Rossie said. 'Let's go down and look at the horses.' "
May 1, 2012
Kittredge is a fine short story writer; one of the best. Read to page 74 of this novel and you will be entertained by a fine story, well told, about a young man signing on with a horse drive from northern California to Calgary. Set in the worst years of the Depression, it calls to mind an era when America and the American West were a very different place from what they are today.
You can put the book down at that point because what follows is a long meandering search for any further illumination of the subjects it has raised. Most frustrating are the characters' impulsiveness and lack of apparent motivation or the need to explain themselves. When they talk, they talk at each other, preferring irony to revealing what they actually think or feel. Since the central character, Rossie, seems only to follow the path of least resistance, trusting to luck, his actions are chiefly determined by his libido - and there are plenty of scenes of how that plays out. But it's a life that remains unexamined - either by Rossie himself or by Kittredge.
I hung on until half-way through the novel and finally jumped to the end, where I found nothing that gave me the idea I'd missed anything. The characters were still opaque and unreflective, still drinking and engaged in bantering, aimless conversations. I've never posted a review here for a book that I haven't read cover to cover, and I hesitate doing that this time. But Kittredge fans and any reader preferring depth of character, a strong story line, a vivid portrayal of history or geography, or any one of the above, should know that they may find this novel less than absorbing.
You can put the book down at that point because what follows is a long meandering search for any further illumination of the subjects it has raised. Most frustrating are the characters' impulsiveness and lack of apparent motivation or the need to explain themselves. When they talk, they talk at each other, preferring irony to revealing what they actually think or feel. Since the central character, Rossie, seems only to follow the path of least resistance, trusting to luck, his actions are chiefly determined by his libido - and there are plenty of scenes of how that plays out. But it's a life that remains unexamined - either by Rossie himself or by Kittredge.
I hung on until half-way through the novel and finally jumped to the end, where I found nothing that gave me the idea I'd missed anything. The characters were still opaque and unreflective, still drinking and engaged in bantering, aimless conversations. I've never posted a review here for a book that I haven't read cover to cover, and I hesitate doing that this time. But Kittredge fans and any reader preferring depth of character, a strong story line, a vivid portrayal of history or geography, or any one of the above, should know that they may find this novel less than absorbing.
November 25, 2012
This is a western novel about a young man who leaves home in the 1930s to work with horses culminating in helping take horses from Nevada to Calgary and returning through Montana where he eventually marries and settles down.
The first part is just great!! The description of the horse drive leaves the reader thinking that you are back in the 30s on that drive. During the drive and his time in Canada and Montana you meet characters who are as complex as they are interesting. I think a lot of this achieved by detailed scenes that show the depth of the characters.
Unfortunately, the latter part of the book loses this interest and detail. While the first half of the book spans a few months, the second half spans sixty years, another goodreads reviewer correctly notes that the characters become less interesting over time. One of the low points was in the second part when the protagonist runs for Governor of Montana, which allows the author, Kittredge, to mention and lighly touch various social and political issues during the 60s but causing me to shake my head at the superficial treatment of the issues and the characters that I loved so much during the first part of the book
The first part is just great!! The description of the horse drive leaves the reader thinking that you are back in the 30s on that drive. During the drive and his time in Canada and Montana you meet characters who are as complex as they are interesting. I think a lot of this achieved by detailed scenes that show the depth of the characters.
Unfortunately, the latter part of the book loses this interest and detail. While the first half of the book spans a few months, the second half spans sixty years, another goodreads reviewer correctly notes that the characters become less interesting over time. One of the low points was in the second part when the protagonist runs for Governor of Montana, which allows the author, Kittredge, to mention and lighly touch various social and political issues during the 60s but causing me to shake my head at the superficial treatment of the issues and the characters that I loved so much during the first part of the book
September 23, 2014
a slow start uncertain as to what value i would get out of finishiing this story about a young boy's decision is skip school to go on the range riding and herding horses. it turned into a document of change from the early 1900s to the 1990s covering all the political events that really effected the american people. it centered around the people in the west who were and are more attached to the landed and very independent. The poliitcs of a man who was self educated on the land and learned to be his own boss became disallusiones in polititics that tended to center on uneducated irrational conclusions about all things of value. As it turned out, a very good read, one that read more like a biography than a novel. the end,however was too abrupt i wasn't ready to conclude and was uncertain as to whether the characters had reached a conclusion. Although the main story centered around the interaction and emotional relationship of a man and a woman, i found it more certained on the man and less on the woman although it tried to touch on the independent eole of the woman influencing the development of the man.
October 15, 2011
I stuck with, before abandoning until the ending, the pretentious, overwrought dialog only because I was sick in bed with nothing else to read. Kittredge honed this novel to be a work of craftsmanship, and he gets A for effort. But it is top-heavy and a chore to follow after the cattle drive. It is also not an accurate depiction of people, especially women, in 1933; nor of sexuality (overplayed renditions of "cock" and not one mention of clitoris); nor of horses and horsemanship, which is my raison de lire for Westerns. (In one place the author equates "colt" to "baby mare." A colt is a male; a baby mare is a filly; either could be a foal. A minor point, perhaps, but it tends to disqualify much else he says about horses.) I agree with the reviewer who lamented that all the characters spoke with the same voice. Even our Cowboy, when his co-optation was complete, turned into one of the insipid high society bores. Now that I am over my cold, I will hasten to the library and return to the real masters of this genre--Louis L'Amour, Zane Grey, Elmer Kelton, and JPS Brown.
October 24, 2012
Picture this: middle seat on a non-stop from Boston to Seattle. Realization that all reading materials are in checked luggage. I find husband elsewhere on the plane and look piteous (and this was before learning that I was one of fifteen passengers without a working TV screen). He gives me The Willow Field because he had found it in a local bookstore and he loves those Western writers like Ivan Doig and Wallace Stegner. I read the book for most of the flight and then once home I finish the book! I really did enjoy the early part when he does the cattle drive. After the early section though it reads to me like just the story of a man's rise. I didn't particularly like how he portrayed women (even though his wife is a great character). Especially the love scenes seem so male-centric. I suppose why should I be surprised? Anyway, I promise to still read Stegner.
January 26, 2008
This is an exploration of how love intersects with loneliness, with some western/cowboy elements thrown in for effect. The landscape mirrors and sometimes echos the human emotions. The author succeeds in making what doesn't happen as significant as what does. Both genders of characters are strongly written, sometimes hard to find in western writing.
Five paragraphs from the end the main character, who has returned to his beginning place, Rossie is speaking:
"Not long after I left, up in the Canadian Rockies, a man named Bob Waters told me he though maybe men and women were too strange for one another. But I've come to think maybe that's why they stick together, always trying to make sense of the other one. Here's to strangeness."
Five paragraphs from the end the main character, who has returned to his beginning place, Rossie is speaking:
"Not long after I left, up in the Canadian Rockies, a man named Bob Waters told me he though maybe men and women were too strange for one another. But I've come to think maybe that's why they stick together, always trying to make sense of the other one. Here's to strangeness."
November 27, 2015
DNF. Expected a good saga about a man and his life and family, instead got a book I abandoned not even halfway through it. The pacing was really uneven...parts of the plot plodded along while crucial parts were sped up and the result was something that felt like it should've been sent back to the drawing board before being published. The characters were not very well drawn and I couldn't establish a connection with any of them. Also, despite the majority of the book taking place in the Depression era/WWII timeline, the dialogue and descriptions felt more modern. While the premise was interesting, I think it should've all been fleshed out a bit more.
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