The Alkali Cliffs

by Thomas Davis

The Alkali Cliffs is a novel about how a poor family, who lives by raising rabbits, chickens, a garden, and hay on the alkali flats of North Delta, Colorado, struggles against a rich banker determined to build a rendering plant next to their small farm. As the story unfolds in a world different from today’s world, Jimmy Smith slowly changes as he struggles with the challenges he and his family face. Decisions lead to consequences that lead to more decisions that lead to more consequences in a cycle of action and reaction. Uncle Solomon, who has always been Jimmy’s best friend, even though he has always acted like a simpleton, becomes a complex, troubled human being. Tom, the eldest son in the family, and Jimmy face dilemmas that threaten the families’ cherished way of life. The world of the Alkali Cliffs, wild in its beauty, filled with wildlife, seems about to be harmed in ways from which it cannot recover. Contemporary in many of its themes, including that of environmental responsibility and the struggle between the rich and the poor, the novel portrays a world that has disappeared. In this world families still believe men should be the head of the family even though the families' women are, in many ways, stronger, and poverty is accepted as the way some people have to live.

165 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 18, 2013

About the author

Thomas Davis is an American writer and has served as the Chief Academic Officer, President, or Acting President of five tribal colleges and universities. He also helped found the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium, which represents indigenous controlled post-secondary institutions of higher learning from the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the Far East.

Davis has written and had published non-fiction, fiction, and poetry books and has had articles and essays appear in a number of magazines and academic journals. He has also had plays performed in Minnesota and Wisconsin. His novel, In the Unsettled Homeland of Dreams, won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award in 2019. A powerful performer, he has given poetry readings in colleges, universities, and in other venues throughout the United States and in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.