Hell's Bottom, Colorado

Hell's Bottom, Colorado Synopsis

Winner of the PEN USA Award for Fiction. ';An admirable, steely-eyed collection of stories and vignettes featuring a family of ranchers.'Publishers Weekly On Hell's Bottom Ranch, a section of land below the Front Range, there are women like Renny who prefer a ';little Hell swirled with their Heaven' and men like Ben, her husband, who's ';gotten used to smoothing over Renny's excesses.' There is a daughter who maybe plays it too safe and a daughter plagued by only ';half-wanting' what life has to offer. The ranch has been the site of births and deaths of both cattle and children, as well as moments of amazing harmony and clear vision. ';Set in the unpredictable West, these stories remind us that we cannot escape the messiness and obsessions of ordinary life.'Patricia Henley, author ofHummingbird House ';Displays the talent of a brilliant, new writer.'The Rocky Mountain News ';With the rugged beauty of the Rocky Mountains as backdrop, Pritchett's spare yet richly evocative stories portray the stark reality of life on a Colorado cattle ranch, where three generations of one family tend the land and animals, devoting and losing themselves to an existence few would understand or choose to follow . . . Regardless of whether the songs she hears are sung by a meadowlark or a jailbird, Pritchett excels at juxtaposing the sensuous with the severe, the rapturous with the repugnant.'Booklist ';The stories jump back and forth in time, but their message is clear: this family's ties are as quixotic, fierce, and enduring as the land that binds them together.'School Library Journal

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