ell, my advice is not to move to Canada halfway. As I continue to suffer from dependency on our Northern Neighbors to get so much as a cell phone or Internet access, I turned to reading and watching more television than is healthy. Modern science fiction overload. Then, I turned back to Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, culture shock perhaps for the uninitiated and unfamiliar. When one thinks, Science Fiction, whether you call it "sci-fi," "SF," or speculative fiction, this is not the novel that comes to mind. Readers tired of lax syntax, lazy lexicons, and the dull regularity of … Continue reading Return of The Itinerant Scribe

n the spring of 2001, my husband and I stayed at the Triangle Ranch B&B on the eastern edge of the Badlands in South Dakota. The Bad River wraps through the property, and in the morning we could hear wild turkeys nesting in the cottonwoods. Newborn calves and cows in various stages of mothering dotted the near-by pasture. The hosts, Lyndy and Kenny Ireland, live in a house that Lyndy’s great-grandfather ordered as a kit from the Sears catalogue in the early 1900’s. He traveled overland 45 miles to meet the nearest train and offloaded dozens of pallets onto wagons. With so little lumber available on the treeless plains, mail order houses were not uncommon, but this was no ordinary house. It was a two-story foursquare design—as high as it was wide as it was deep. The interior had prairie school elements: brick fireplace, hardwood floors, leaded glass in the sun room, oak woodwork, built-in bookcases, a wide bay window. Upstairs, four bedrooms and an indoor bath. Sears offered different designs for the outside façade, and Lyndy’s ancestors chose the Alhambra, a stucco exterior with an elaborate scalloped header named after the Spanish fortress in Granada.

Continue reading “Finding Toby’s House by Pamela Carter Joern”

Announcing Our Sizzling Summer Sale! Visit http://www.bisonbooks.com/sale and save 50% on a variety of books, including: Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, paper and cloth editions The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Local Wonders by Ted Kooser You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make it in This League by Pam Postema and Gene Wojciechowski Many more titles are on sale.  Visit our Summer Web Sale page for a complete list.  Sale prices good through August 31, 2006! Continue reading Save 50% on Select Books

The Broidered Garment by Hilda Martinsen Neihardt “[A] fondly told story of the lives of John and Mona Neihardt, The Broidered Garment is a fine addition to the Neihardt canon and in the spirit of other work by Hilda Neihardt, who died in 2004. She did much to champion her father’s work and reputation, performing readings of his poetry, accompanied by her son Robin on classical guitar; writing Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow: Personal Memories of the Lakota Holy Man and John Neihardt; and editing Black Elk Lives: Conversations with the Black Elk Family. The Broidered Garment completes this work … Continue reading The Broidered Garment

Famous by Kathleen Flenniken “[Famous] weaves together two seemingly antithetical themes: the comic indignations and attractions of minor celebrities, and the everyday joys and sorrows of family life. . . .  Ordinariness—our need for it, and our frustrations with it—becomes Flenniken’s signature subject: the quietest evenings ‘make you what you are.’ Flenniken . . . has fashioned a poetry comfortable with self-imposed limits. . . . She still finds herself searching after mysteries, in board games, novels, and her own life.” —Publishers Weekly Annex “At some point in our lives, most of us come to realize that we aren’t going … Continue reading Famous

  Starred ReviewMover of Bones by Robert Vivian “Vivian’s ability to fully inhabit his characters, to render their voices, their thoughts, their quirks and fears, is flawless. Indeed, the emotional intensity and unrelenting revelations of the interior life of its most banal people are exhausting. This is a Nebraska that would send Poe running for his life. Like the dead girl at its center, this tale is disturbing, horrifying and beautiful all at once.” —Kirkus Reviews “Vivian writes in a poetic, almost hallucinatory style. He clearly seeks to give consolation or redemption to those who have lost loved ones to … Continue reading Mover of Bones

A package was delivered to my porch yesterday from University of Nebraska Press. My son brought it in and the family stood around while I opened it—twenty copies of my first book, Famous. It is a beautiful thing. After a few minutes, the family wandered off, but I didn’t want it out of reach or sight, put one copy in the kitchen while I cooked and one in the office while I read email, and when it was time for bed I took one for my nightstand. Could this beautiful thing be mine? Creamy paper, elegant font, cover image I … Continue reading My Book Arrived

ere’s me, interviewing myself, with some of the questions people have asked about the writing of The Floor of the Sky. 

 

Did you grow up on a ranch?

No. I didn’t grow up around cattle or horses. In fact, I’m a lousy rider. When I’m on horseback, I feel like I’m on top of the Empire State Building. I’m a disappointment to myself, but I’d rather jump out of an airplane, where I’m in charge of pulling the ripcord on my own parachute, than ride atop all those pounds of uncontrollable muscle and hot wind. Not that I have ever jumped out of an airplane, but you see what I mean.
    I did, however, grow up in western Nebraska. My family lived in the country until I was 10; then we moved to a small town. I haven’t lived there for a long time, but I return every year to visit family. For some of us, an early landscape leaves a strong imprint. I love the prairie, the rolling hills and big sky and tumbleweeds and weaving grass. I have a Minnesota friend who grew up with trees and forest who tells me that she feels frightened on the plains, as if she could fly off the face of the earth. I feel exactly the same sensation, only I love being untethered and free. I can visit the woods and appreciate the beauty, but eventually I feel claustrophobic.

Continue reading “The Inside Scoop with Pamela Carter Joern”

ello, dearest little chickens.  I’m back!  I can only imagine how traumatic my absence has been for you all, and I promise such an extended departure from the UN Press Blog will never happen again.  I wish I could say that I have been traversing the Spice
Route in search of rare silks, or that I have been in the Amazon discovering a new
9-legged beetle.  But in truth, I’ve just been dodging the frenetic bullets of real life.

Enough about that.  If National Book Award nominee Kent Haruf ("The Tie That Binds," "Plainsong") dressed in drag and migrated his characters about 4 hours east of his fictional Holt, Colorado, he just
might write like Pamela Carter Joern.  Her novel, The Floor of the Sky, is part of the Flyover Fiction series, and is due out in September.  But where Haruf is a master of the crotchety, stuck-in-his-ways rural man, Joern’s gift is capturing the essence of Nebraska ranch women. 

Continue reading “Sandhills Lullaby”

f you’re a litblog junkie and a frequent visitor to the LitBlog Co-op, as I am, you probably already know that Michael Martone’s by Michael Martone (2005, Fiction Collective 2) is the LitBlog Co-ops Summer 2006 Read This.  My heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Martone!  The book seems very unconventional and fun.  You can get to an excerpt of the novel on LitBlog Co-op or at Fiction Collective 2.

Continue reading “LitBlog Co-op Summer 2006 Read This”