William Kittredge Books

I was expecting something along the lines of All the Pretty Horses. What I got was one of those stories kids make up on the spur of the moment when they're playing cowboys and indians outside or when they're imagining themselves playing in a big baseball game and hitting a game-winning home run -- "The crowd roars as I cross home plate!" Wow, was this storyline loose, free to introduce anything at anytime. None of the characters are particularly endearing, especially the main character. Kittredge is an accomplished wordsmith, but he's established himself for me as no more than a second-rate pulp fiction writer, albeit one with an obvious appreciation of the "wonders" of the West.

I am an avid reader of of both non-fiction and fiction works about the American West and was really looking forward to this novel. However, I absolutely hated it. I could not relate to most of the characters, especially Eliza and Rossie. I have spent many years traveling throughout Montana, western Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, etc. Mr. Kittredge's geographical mistakes were extremely annoying.

Imagine the best book you've ever read. Then double it. Then double it again. Captivating characters, wide and stunning imagery, great story, and of course the craftwork of a master. C''mon Kittredge, give us another.

This novel does a good job with people and the rest is not as good. Fortunately, there is a lot more of it about people than anything else. The latter part of the book is much better than the front part. At a third of the way through I was going to give it two stars, the middle third gained it another star, and only memories of the beginning kept the last third from raising it to five stars.

This is the story of a boy, Rossie, and the progress of his growth as he lives out his life in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana. Rossie begins as a cowboy in Nevada and remains a horseman all his life. After he encounters Eliza, she becomes a key element of the story. A number of other people enter the story at intervals and, as is the case in life, most remain more or less connected to the end. A few of the bit players are typical westerners, but the psyches of the main characters are too unique to call typical.

Kittredge is almost an icon of Montana literature, although this is his first novel. He has filled this book with a great deal of what he has learned about Montana over decades, perhaps he includes too much. There are countless descriptions of experiences, events, and geographical features recognizable by those familiar with Montana and its history. If you are an aficionado of Montana literature, you might want to read this book with a notebook at hand and see how many allusions you recognize to other books. Some Kittredge spells out and others are subtle. One of the more obvious is the Missoula minister who is supposed to marry Rossie; his name is Dr. McLean and "they're legendary walkers and fishermen, two brothers and the father." There are probably some references that were accidental but are simply part of Kittredge's vast knowledge of the state. If this book had a bibliography, it would be at least three pages; small type.

One weakness, especially in the front part of the book, is some inaccuracies in time and space. Even a novel should be careful how it treats such things. When trailing the horse herd through Oregon on the way to Calgary, how could Steens Mountain be to the east? A little later, the description of the horse drive jumps from the entry into Montana at Monida Pass all the way to Choteau. That is a gutless thing for the writer to do; there are a lot of miles and a lot of difficulty in that gap. In addition, the timeline from the beginning of the drive until Rossie arrives back in the Flathead Valley is not credible.

One last criticism concerns three vulgar words. Remove them and the novel would be pages shorter. Westerners used such words very sparingly during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and almost never in mixed company. Their frequent usage damages the authenticity of story.

Readers of novels usually try to discern the messages or concepts the writer intends to convey. There is an interesting sentence near the back of the book: "People in Montana know what happened to the Indians, and they see that it's happening to them." Much of this book is about protecting what is wonderful about Montana from being ruined by people who don't take time to recognize those values. A connected concern is those people who move to Montana and bring along the very habits that made where they came from inferior to Montana.

William Kittredge has once again broken new ground, this time with a powerful first novel, a glorious epic of life in the American West in the early 1930s. As in his previous work, "A Hole in the Sky: A Memoir", Kittredge proves that he is a wordsmith of the first order. We are immediately involved intimately in the life of Rossie Benasco as he progresses from a "wrango boy" of 15, living horseback on the hardscrabble ranches of Nevada and California, to a well-respected man of wealth and power, an influential landowner in the starkly beautiful Bitterroot Mountains of Montana.

"The Willow Field" is full of hard lives and lives of luxury, loves and losses, Kittredge's own convictions, and perhaps most importantly of all, a panoramic view of the American West as it actually was in the setting of the early 1930s.

Definitely a marvelous read, one I found difficult to put down, and impossible to get out of my mind afterward. Kittredge has established himself firmly as a first-class novelist with this passionate book about Rossie Benasco and the Montana so beloved by them both.

Although this book certainly has artistic merit, I would not have called it the "Best of". We have visited the area many times and are well aware of the various terrains. In some cases, the photographer seemed to choose the "ugliest of" and in even more cases, the photos could have been taken anywhere - there was nothing to indicate a particular location. Examples would be an animal running across an empty field. Fine if you're looking for nature, not very useful if you are trying to identify "Best of"/beautiful spots to visit. This was a gift for my husband and he was not very impressed...

This book has very enchanting photography. If you love nature, but are locked up in city life; This is a very nice book to have just to linger in and daydream of the wide open spaces. Of course it may get addictive and make you leave the city in search of a peaceful homestead to call home...

Featuring an informative essay by William Kittredge, and comprising a wealth of color photography and a "reader friendly" text by Monte Hartman, America's 100th Meridian: A Plains Journey is an astounding coffee-table book tour, and the fruit of six journeys along the two-thousand-mile line that divides East from West. The highlight of America's 100th Meridian is the full-color photography of everything from railroad crossings to windblown fields, farm animals, roadside shrines, panoramic sunsets and much more. The text summarizes of history in America's heartlands through the decades, from the Ice Age to the modern day, and the resulting impacts upon the landscape and the local populace. A truly splendid and pristine memory, capturing timeless moments and locations with purely professional quality. Highly recommended especially for photography buffs and armchair travelers.

If you are looking for a book with artistic photographs, this is ok, but if you want to know what life and people are like along the 100th meridian, this won't give you a clue. There is a lot more here than rust, decay and shadows. This part of the world has much more to offer than the desolation depicted in this book.

I love Bill Kitteredge as a storyteller, thinker, and even as a prophet. His vision of how story informs ethics is among the most sane approaches I've read, both to the art and role of storytelling and to ethics itself. His applicaton of his ethos to life in the West is sage. I've read Kitteredge's previous books and this book, *Taking Care* is a well-wrought distillation of Kittredge's former books with some fine tuning.

I rate this book as I do because just over half the book is Kittredge's writing. The rest is an essay by Scott Slovic which reviews Kittredge and covers too much of the same ground I just read in Kittredge's own writing, followed by a helpful and comprehensive bibliography. Slovic does good work. But, I wanted more Kittredge.

I have one last complaint: the book is published as a *Credo* book, apparently part of a series. But, I'm not sure. Nowhere does this book say anything about other writers contributing to the series, whether in the past or the future. I would be excited to read other writers' credos, especially if they were writers I was unfamiliar with. But, if I were familiar with the writer and if the Credo book were like this one, a revisit to previously published stories and ideas, then I wouldn't buy it.