Winter Range

This is a contemporary literary western, as its title implies, but it is also a love story, a meditation on animal rights, and a study of the values of a small community. The author has a gift of dialog and writes beautiful descriptive passages. It's interesting to compare the history and sense of identity of Pattiann, one of the author's main characters in here, with that of Judy Blunt, author of the memoir, BREAKING CLEAN. Blunt's memoir is an excellent tandem read, and in the front of the book she provides us with a map which comes in handy reading either book. Blunt is also the first person the author thanks on the acknowledgments page, but I can also see the influences here of William Kittredge's HOLE IN THE SKY and OWNING IT ALL, and perhaps some of Pam Houston's COWBOYS ARE MY WEAKNESS. Also, there are some interesting contrasts in here to Alan LeMay's novel by the same title, WINTER RANGE, published back in 1932. Claire Davis's WINTER RANGE, however, is still distinctly the author's creation and wondrously beautiful and compelling it is. Overlooked for major awards during its year, it was still good enough to be selected for discussion by the FRESH INK READING GROUP at Readerville and made for an interesting month. Five Stars.

Claire Davis' triumphant debut novel, "Winter Range," is a complex and challenging work. Precisely and elegantly crafted, the novel's setting, the fiercely beautiful and forbidding praire of eastern Montana, unrelentingly batters both the characters and the reader. Focusing on the psychological development of its three central characters, "Winter Range" explores the theme of adult responsibility, especially in the face of trauma, discontent and rebellion. A daunting winter brings to the breaking point the taut tensions between an honorable sheriff, Ike Parsons, his proud but haunted wife Pattiann, and a truly malicious misanthrope, Chas, whose unrequited passion for Pattiann complicates an absorbing conflict between the characters, their own pasts and their abilities to survive an environment seemily indifferent to their circumstances. Ms. Davis provides a powerful and compelling response to her own core question: when do we stop blaming others and begin accepting our lives as our own, as flawed as they may be, for what they truly are?Ultimately, the author has each character commit to an answer provided by Pattiann as she sorts out the conflicts engendered by a restrictive upbrining and her love of a man whose calm restores her sense of self. "Isn't there a time when a peson has to say, all right, now this is the rest of my life? And I'm accountable fo that?" "Winter Range" picks up momentum throughout its fast-paced narrative, and the conclusion is both liberating and forbidding.I also feel a need to compliment the author on how hard she worked for the reader. For this is a beautifully crafted piece of literature. She has a marvelous sense of imagery. Take, for example, her description of parents' grief after the death of their child. "And now he was dead and his parents, early in their middle years, would wake the rest of their days and know the relentless taste of grief as sharp and cold on their tongues as metal on a winter's morning." Ms. Davis constantly reinvents the Montana plains, from its fickle abundance to its devastating winters; those who live and work as cattle ranchers receive unspoken, but genuine, homage through her descriptions of their environment.This dark, brooding and intense novel signals the advent of an accomplished author. In tune with the people she describes, Claire Davis offers us unusual and timely insights into the adult mind.

I finished Winter Range a week ago and I still find myself thinking about the characters and the landscape. These people are real. I found myself torn between wanting to know what was going to happen (read fast, read faster!) and wanting to enjoy the sentences (read slower, read it again). I finally decided just to read it twice.

In her stunning novel, WINTER RANGE, Claire Davis takes on some of the most powerful and wrenching issues that confront those who live in the American West today, such as changing economies, the roles of both women and men in farm and ranch economies, continuing migrations--both in and out, and questions about property ownership and responsibility. Although the story can be read as a gripping suspense novel, it also illustrates clearly how there are no easy answers for the complicated and sometimes painful lives of these richly drawn characters. This is a "must read" novel!

The story of "newcomer," Sheriff Ike Parsons, a Wisconsin dairy farmer's son, and one-time big city cop, and his wife, Pattiann, daughter of a local Montanan cattle rancher, has the genuine rawboned flavor of contemporary life in a rural community where life is folksy but complex and the folkways often harmful. "And he (Ike) wondered how long could a man learn, unlearn, and relearn before he came upon the thing that undid him? Storm. Drought, Age. The market. One year you're at home and the next--a stranger to the place you'd made for yourself. And maybe the best you could hope for in those instances was to find yourself, like Chas, still young enough to start over at something else." Claire Davis doesn't waste words, rather she uses them with a poetic vividness. Each line stands rich and firm--all senses are touched--and her similes and metaphores are delightful capturing your imagination and roping you into the scene whether or not you care to be there. Ultimately, your heart thumps like a kettledrum from the symphonic experience, yet you never lose the feel of the harshness of the winter range in east-central Montana. Snuggle up under the Big Sky and savor this one, again and again.