About this item
Highlights
- A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist - Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award - Winner of the Oregon Book Award "An instant classic. . . a truly beautiful piece of American storytelling.
- Author(s): Molly Gloss
- 208 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
A reading group favorite, The Jump-Off Creek is the unforgettable story of widowed homesteader Lydia Sanderson and her struggles to settle in the mountains of Oregon in the 1890s. "Every gritty line of the story rings true" (Seattle Times) as Molly Gloss delivers an authentic and moving portrait of the American West. "A powerful novel of struggle and loss" (Dallas Morning News), The Jump-Off Creek gives readers an intimate look at the hardships of frontier life and a courageous woman determined to survive.Book Synopsis
A PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist - Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award - Winner of the Oregon Book Award
"An instant classic. . . a truly beautiful piece of American storytelling." --William Kittredge, author of Owning It All
A widowed homesteader is determined to make a life in the unforgiving mountains of late 19th century Oregon in this "powerful novel of struggle and loss." (Dallas Morning News)
Acclaimed author Molly Gloss drew on pioneer diaries and old family stories to write this modern Western classic of a solitary woman's frontier life. In the 1890s, Lydia Bennett Sanderson, a hardship-honed widow, leaves her old life behind and journey's to Jump-Off Creek to make her way as a homesteader in the backcountry of Oregon. Her neighbors are few and far between: Tim Whiteaker and Blue Odell are trying to make a go of it on their small hardscrabble ranch, while Evelyn Walker - a young, lonely wife - is rearing her children in daunting isolation. And a trio of rootless cowboys are squatting in the mountains, their only income the bounty from poisoned wolves. While Lydia toils into the summer, building fences, digging ditches, and repairing her homestead cabin, Tim and Blue engage in a deadly spoilers game with the wolvers. As the months pass, there is good and ill fortune, the exchange of fair-and-square favors, and Lydia finds both courage and community in her determination to survive.
An unforgettable tale in which "every gritty line of the story rings true" (Seattle Times), Gloss delivers an authentic and moving portrait of the American West.
Review Quotes
"A rare treat to find characters we can care about this much." -- Philadelphia Inquirer
"As authentic as sand in one's shoes." -- Edward Hoagland
"The book is a prism of loneliness in the form of a novel." -- Los Angeles Times
"Drawing on pioneer diaries, journals and hand-me-down stories of her own ancestors, Gloss displays a deep awareness not only of the brutal hardships of frontier life, but also of the moral codes and emotional attachments of the people who settled there." -- Publishers Weekly
"There is a gentle, touching overcast to this raw-knuckled pioneer story of a lone (but, she insists, not ""lonely"") hardship-honed widow homesteading in 1895 Oregon. . . . Gloss's conscientious McPhee-like detailing of hand-blistering homesteading toil is achingly effective; but it's the author's reading of lives locked in by hardship, loneliness, and real danger, and of their careful steps toward community, that is so appealing. A moving and engrossing first novel." -- Kirkus Reviews
"A powerful novel of struggle and loss." -- Dallas Morning News
"Every gritty line of the story rings true . . . extraordinarily fine writing." -- Seattle Times