Title Sixty: The Last Cowgirl by Jana Richman

I actually read this book months ago, and then re-read it after that. I'll put it on the stack of books to be reviewed, and then I take it off again and set it aside. I don't know why, but I just feel like I won't be able to do the book justice when I write about it. Then I realized that I need to get my ass in gear on this Challenge, so I resolved to do it. I apologize in advance, because the book deserves more than I'm about to give it. I just...I don't know how. I'm not that good.

Dickie Sinfield (only her father calls her by her given name of Darlene) had a normal suburban girlhood in Utah with manicured lawns and playing on the sidewalk in front of the house until the day her father decided that the family was going to move to a ranch outside of town so that he could follow his own childhood dream of becoming a cowboy. With the exception of Dickie's brother Heber, the family is less than enthused - Dickie misses her neighborhood and friends, her older sister Annie is horrified by the entire thing and spends her time out of the house or locked in her room, and their mother just quietly resents it. Her father's dream is only viable thanks to the efforts of two neighbors and fellow ranchers who would become more family than friends - Bev Christensen and Merv Nelson. A few years later, a local army base and the secrets beneath it would devastate all three ranchers, and Dickie would bolt for Salt Lake City as soon as she hit 18, where she would become a journalist and cut ties with her cowgirl past.

Dickie's story begins with the death of her brother Heber, an accident hushed up by the military base where he works - the same military base that played a role in the destruction of cattle herds decades earlier. Dickie is forced to confront the past in order to come to terms with Heber's death, and the story switches gracefully from the present day to Dickie's recollections of her youth, all told from her point of view. The novel ebbs and flows, unfolding at just the right pace. The plot folds in ranching, government research, environmentalism, Mormonism, family drama, friendship, betrayal, and acceptance in a fascinating way. It's not exactly a tale of redemption; it's more a tale of peace, and coming to terms with your life.

It's just so real. I think that's always been one of the best compliments I can give a book, because I want a story that I can believe in and characters I can know. I'm telling you, there is so much I'm missing here: Dickie's tumultuous relationship with Stumpy, Merv's grandson; her strained relationship with her father; the faithful details of cattle raising and ranch life; the pain of loss; Dickie's spiteful best friend Holly; the residents of Ganoa county and their uneasy acceptance of the military presence that provides jobs yet always casts a shadow of potential disaster. I just don't know how to incorporate all of my thoughts. This book is layered and thought-provoking and insightful and emotional. It's the book that any aspiring writer wants to create. It's lovely. I probably haven't made a very convincing argument here, because I'm babbling, but The Last Cowgirl is a gem. I hope that Richman keeps writing, because she has a fan here.

Title Forty Eight: Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson

Sweet cracker sandwich, this book is so depressing that it should come with a trial pack of Zoloft. The entire narrative takes on the tone of the damp, dark, mossy Oregonian forest in which it's set. It has a claustrophobic and chilly feel and frankly, has one of the most unsympathetic cast of characters ever. I'm not saying it's not good; it's certainly serviceable and has an interesting premise, but it gave me the feeling that if I ever had the misfortune of finding myself in North Fork, Oregon, surrounded by these people, I'd want to put the town in my rearview mirror as fast as I possibly could.

Ann Holmes is a teenage runaway who left home after being raped continually by her mother's boyfriend. She lives in a campsite and picks and sells wild mushrooms for money. One day during her picking, she is overcome by a vision of the Blessed Mother, who instructs her to return and to deliver certain messages to mankind. It's all familiar to a reader like me, who went to Catholic school for eighteen years and is well-versed in the stories of Fatima and Lourdes. At any rate, Ann is soon a celebrity on the Marian devotion circuit, and she's essentially taken advantage of by everyone: the campground neighbor who sees Ann as her moneymaking ticket to a winter in Mexico; the thousands of fanatics who throng to the woods and beg Ann for favors and intentions; the bumbling priest of the miserly local parish who tries, ineffectually, to seduce her. Woven throughout is the story of a pathetic community that has fallen victim to a sharp decline in the logging industry (the derogatory references to liberal treehuggers and the spotted owl abound), along with the tale of Tom Cross, a former logger whose life has disintegrated after his son was left a quadriplegic in a logging accident for which Tom blames himself - he was trying to teach his son how to be a man, not a pussy or a faggot. Tom and his fellow townspeople are essentially Northwestern rednecks: they hate women, Jews, gays, Indians, Asians, and pretty much anyone who isn't a white male quaffing draft beer at one of the local taverns. It's with Cross that Guterson gets sloppy; while I understand using one person to illustrate a human microcosm of the town, it becomes tiresome reading about Tom's preoccupation with sex and thoughts of revenge on everyone who has somehow wronged him.

Back to the larger picture. Ann continues to have visions and insists that a church is to be built on the site, but she's nothing but a pawn to the people around her, and the story concludes with a morose ending. All in all, a decent effort, but it would be vastly improved by enthusiastic pruning of the Cross story and a seventy percent reduction in the sexual themes, allusions and metaphors. (Reading about a guy eating a hamburger with much chewing and "labial noise" put me off my appetite for several hours; I also prefer books that don't reference the scent of a woman's nethers more times than I can count on one hand.)

Title Forty One: Rag and Bone (A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead) by Peter Manseau

This looked way more interesting when I picked it up, kids. I mean, I was raised Catholic, so I'm very familiar with the concept of relics (essentially a piece of a holy person, most often a saint; sometimes clothing will work too). I thought it might be cool to read about the experiences of a guy who spent years traveling around the world in search of certain relics - Saint Anthony's tongue; Saint Francis' toe; Jesus' foreskin; Muhammad's whisker; the Buddha's tooth. Manseau does a decent enough job of describing the relics' places in their respective faiths/belief systems, and gives some informative context, such as the juxtaposition of the world's religions in the Middle East and the genocide in Sri Lanka (site of the Temple of the Holy Tooth). The book itself isn't poorly written. It's just that the subject is as dry as the relics themselves, and it's kind of hard to get jazzed up about it. I salute Manseau for his thorough research and interesting travels, but beyond that, I've got nothing.

(The closest I've ever come to a relic was when I visited the Saint Katherine Drexel Shrine here in Bucks County and prayed at the altar where the saint is buried. I might want to see one sometime, though. Seems kind of interesting.)