{"product_id":"a-country-called-home-isbn-9780307389114","title":"A Country Called Home","description":"A powerful novel of young love and rural isolation from the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eIn the Wilderness\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas Deracotte is just out of medical school, and his pregnant wife, Helen, have their whole future mapped out for them in upper-crust Connecticut. But they are dreamers, and they set out to create their own farm in rural Idaho instead. The fields are in ruins when they arrive, so they hire a farmhand named Manny to help rebuild. But the sudden, frightening birth of their daughter, Elise, tests the young couple, and Manny is called upon to mend this fractured family. An extraordinary story of hope and idealism, \u003cb\u003eA \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCountry Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e is a testament to the power of family—the family we are born to and the family we create.A \u003ci\u003eKansas City Star\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eWashington Post \u003c\/i\u003eBest Book of the Year \u003cbr\u003eAn \u003ci\u003eOregonian \u003c\/i\u003eTop Ten Northwest Book of the Year \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Gorgeously written . . . lush and memorable. . . . \u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e contains whispers of its literary ancestors but issues its own rich-throated cry into the wilderness.” –\u003ci\u003eKansas City Star\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“In the literature of the American frontier, few setups are as fertile and reliable as the Easterner come West. . . . Because [Barnes] knows the territory so intimately, \u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e is filled with exquisitely etched landscapes. The novel brims with the smell of brambles and berries along an Idaho riverbank, the gritty feel of the dust in an abandoned homesteader’s shack, the sounds of grouse and quail in the fields.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Casts light on the yearning, restless human heart. . . . Powerful.” –\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In the tradition of the great Western writer Willa Cather, Kim Barnes has written a novel as deeply rooted in the soil of her native Idaho.”–\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e “Quietly haunting…. [Barnes’s] descriptions of the rugged landscape quiver with stark beauty, wisdom and redemptive grace, much as her characters do.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“The idealistic dreams and careless attitudes of the 1960s echo through this powerful novel…. Barnes captures Northwest country with a poet’s eye.” –\u003ci\u003eSeattle Post-Intelligencer \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Brilliant. . . . One of three epigraphs, from master writer John Gardner, reads ‘The fall from grace is endless.’ And so it is with Manny, Thomas, Helen and Elise, who are always and slowly losing the battle not just with nature, but with themselves.” –\u003ci\u003eSt. Louis Post Dispatch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e, like many Western works of its kind, is a story of perseverance. Barnes’s characters, all carrying their own secret pain, barely keep their heads above the waters that rage around them, literally and figuratively. . . . An elegy of sorts, to the power of the natural world, the lives it so indifferently claims and the grace with which those affected respond to its blows.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e is poetically written. The vivid descriptions of the land paint a romantic portrait of the wilderness, where the couple dream they’ll find their ideal life but soon discover that nothing comes easy.” –\u003ci\u003eLas Vegas Review-Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Barnes’s prose is lovely, often incantatory, as she weaves the story of the troubled Deracotte family.” –\u003ci\u003eNew West \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“At the heart of this disturbing novel set in the Idaho wilderness is the desperate hunger of its characters to escape ennui and emptiness–in short, to find love. . . . Written in beautiful poetic prose, \u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e is highly recommended.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Tennessean \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “The country through which Kim Barnes characters’ travel in this novel of spiritual and emotional searching is a landscape eroded by grief and yearning and ultimately shame for our dissolution from our gods.  I finished reading \u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e some time ago and still cannot quite move on from the experience.” –Mark Spragg, author of \u003ci\u003eAn Unfinished Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Country Called Home \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003efeels like a classic. . . . An engrossing, sometimes heartbreaking read with a leavening of hopefulness, Kim Barnes’s new novel is not to be missed.” –\u003ci\u003eBookreporter \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Kim Barnes’s new novel is an exquisitely complex story, by turns pointed and poignant, about everything that matters: family, loyalty, religion, memory, love. With a master's skill Barnes paints a world tinged with loss, adeptly depicting sentiments left unspoken, relationships stunted by the hard winds of grief and guilt, and singular moments full to brimming with natural beauty and grace.”  –Brady Udall, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Miracle Life of Edgar Mint\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Barnes’s use of language is stunning, making you want to reread paragraphs out loud to someone else so they can enjoy it with you.” –\u003ci\u003eSacramento Book Review \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home \u003c\/b\u003eis a weave of human longings, accurate in its rendering of the ways they accumulate. . . . Give it a while, watch it come to life, and you’ll find yourself rationing the pages, wishing it was longer.” –William Kittredge, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Willow Field\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A seductive book of love and obsession. . . . Some books are easily put down, but the best of them, like \u003cb\u003eA Country Called Home\u003c\/b\u003e, won’t let go of you.” –Claire Davis, author of \u003ci\u003eWinter Range\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eKim Barnes\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novel \u003ci\u003eFinding Caruso\u003c\/i\u003e and two memoirs, \u003ci\u003eIn the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country—\u003c\/i\u003ea finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize—and \u003ci\u003eHungry for the World\u003c\/i\u003e. She is coeditor with Mary Clearman Blew of \u003ci\u003eCircle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers\u003c\/i\u003e, and with Claire Davis of \u003ci\u003eKiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty\u003c\/i\u003e. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including \u003ci\u003eThe Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain.Chapter One\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1960\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe druggist waited, whistling, looking out the window, nodding to each person who passed along the Main Street of Fife. It was early, the bank not yet open. The warming September wind wafted through the door seams. On the north hill, he could see the sun just hitting the flat metal roof of the Clearwater Mental Hospital and, across the shared parking lot, the high school. Dr. K often joked that the children of Fife could look out their windows and see their future before them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How much?” Manny asked again. The boy was tall enough to meet the older man eye to eye, but he kept his gaze on the faded counter as though some miracle might transpire there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Same as last time.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe cola sat between them, dripping condensation. Manny laid out three pennies, pretended to search for more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Don’t got it, do you?” The druggist was not an unfriendly man but brusque and burly, built more like a butcher than a purveyor of medicine. Dr. K, the locals called him, his full name, Kalinosky, too much to mess with. His role in the town went beyond the filling of prescriptions and the dispensing of antiseptics: he diagnosed strep throat, checked children for lice, scoured the wounds caused by pitched rocks, chain saw slips, bicycle wrecks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No, sir.” Manny freed his hands, let them drop to his sides. He peered at his shoes, the seams stretched and frayed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K sighed, shook his head, pointed toward the door. “Broom’s just outside. Make yourself useful for an hour.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike others in Fife, Dr. K knew the details of Manny’s life: his parents’ move from California to the isolated Idaho land they believed a more honest place; the strange little canvas hut that inspired the town’s curiosity and contempt. His father’s insistence on learning the dying art of horse-logging from an old man who stank of sweat and juniper berries. Manny’s birth just a few miles up Itsy Creek, and the death of his mother twelve years later when his little sister, born already dead, was followed by the blood they could not stop flowing. The father, once admired for his native ingenuity and his matched team of Percheron geldings, had headed south to find work and never came back. The good women of Fife had proceeded with a kind of communal adoption, passing the responsibility for Manny’s care from one to the other, each week a different mother, father, cast of siblings, and then the cycle repeating. Dr. K remembered the morning he’d opened the drugstore to find Mrs. Keasling wringing her hands, repeating again and again that \u003ci\u003eder boy, der boy\u003c\/i\u003e was missing. Dr. K had found Manny where he thought he would, asleep in the fair barn, his father’s auctioned draft horses snuffling his hair, placing their great hooves gently beside him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManny stepped outside with the broom, scattering the cats that had gathered for their morning meal. Too many toms, Dr. K thought. Too many litters, but he couldn’t turn away a single one of them. He watched as Manny worked the windows clean of cobwebs, pleased with the care he took with the corners. Despite everything, or maybe because of it, he’d grown into a fine young man: tall and strong-shouldered, more handsome than he needed to be. Thick dark hair, dark eyes, skin like an Italian, Dr. K thought. He looked like he might be broody, but wasn’t. When Manny ran the broom a final time along each crack of the sidewalk and knocked the bristles clean before stepping back into the store, Dr. K opened the cash register and pulled out a dollar bill.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Here. Buy yourself some \u003ci\u003ereal\u003c\/i\u003e food.” Dr. K slipped the pencil behind his ear, wiped a hand the length of his face. “Listen. You need to get out there and do something. Ray Coon’s logging outfit might need a swamper. Or what about the railroad? Didn’t I hear that they were hiring?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManny shrugged. “Guess I’m okay.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Okay? What’s that mean? There’s just no reason for you to be living like a hobo. It’s one thing when you’re a boy to be spending your days piddling around at the river, but you’re about past that now. Pretty soon, if you’re not doing nothing, you’ll be good for nothing.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManny nodded, agreeable as always. “You got more work you’d like me to do?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K sat down on the high stool he kept for resting his feet. “Another few months, I might use you for delivery. Bad weather sets in, business picks up. Which reminds me—how many jars of VapoRub you see on the shelf?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManny counted three, one large, two small. The druggist grunted, made a note on a piece of paper. “Better order more. Those Carter kids \u003ci\u003eeat\u003c\/i\u003e that stuff. Mother thinks it does them more good from the inside.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K was tallying his laxative inventory when a man stepped in. Dress shirt and shoes, pants still holding a crease. Sharp nose and chin. Hair just past a good cut. Outside, a faded red Volkswagen sat at the curb, a young woman in the passenger seat, holding her hair away from her neck, fanning herself with a map.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K moved to rest his meaty palms on the counter. “Yes, sir. What can I help you with?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I’m looking for Bag Balm.” The man’s voice had a strange cadence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bag Balm we got.” Dr. K pointed around Manny. “Grab that green tin, Manny. Large size?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man nodded his head and pulled a money clip from his pocket.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot many people came in who weren’t known by the pharmacist in some intimate way. He’d sold the boys their first condoms, seen most of the town’s women through menstruation, childbirth, and menopause. He prescribed headache cures and hangover remedies, administered narcotics to the suffering and sedation to those stricken by grief. If this new man had settled himself within the county, Dr. K would soon make him familiar; if he were only passing through, Dr. K would extract some anecdote to amuse or enlighten the next customer who came in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K extended a thick hand. “Burt Kalinosky.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Thomas Deracotte.” The stranger shook quickly. He seemed less nervous than efficient. Knew his business and wanted to get on with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Just traveling through, then?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“We’re here from New Haven. Connecticut. My wife and I have purchased the Bateman place.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sure, I know the place. Knew Olie, too.” Dr. K dealt out the man’s change and followed him to the door. “Bateman place, huh? Last I heard, it’d gotten pretty lean.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man took a moment to examine his shoes, looked out the window to Main Street before turning his attention back to the pharmacist. “You might let people know that we’ll be looking for a few laborers. We’ll be able to offer room and board, once our buildings are complete.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Well, then,” Dr. K said, “you should meet this young man. He could use some work.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“How old is he?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Manny? Hell, I’m not sure exactly. How old are you, Manny?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManny cleared his throat. “Near eighteen.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He’s got a good head on him. Only fault that I can see is that he’d rather fish than break a sweat. That and read books.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeracotte’s face relaxed. His eyes were stone gray, the color of river rock. “What are you reading these days?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe boy flushed with the sudden attention. “Great Gatsby, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDeracotte gave a slight nod of approval. “Are you a fan of Fitzgerald?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Guess I’m not sure yet.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man smiled. “How about Monday morning to start? Do you have transportation?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“And you know the place?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yes, sir.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Good. I’ll see you then.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K watched through the window as Deracotte ducked into the little car and said something to the woman, who nodded and laughed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You better be grateful. I might decide I want that job myself.” He walked to the cash register, began counting change into the till.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Bet he’s that doctor we heard might be coming,” Manny said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K stopped counting his money long enough to gaze toward the door, process the possibility. “You think?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I do.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe druggist stacked the quarters, then the dimes, scratched numbers on the back of a receipt. “Wonder what that would mean.” He touched the nickels, looked up at Manny blankly. “I can’t remember how many goddamn five-cent pieces there are in a dollar.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Twenty,” Manny said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yeah,” Dr. K said. “Twenty.” He let them drop back into the till one at a time. “Guess a doctor might mean more business. More prescriptions to fill.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“That’s true.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Injured wouldn’t have to travel so far.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You’ve always been good to come to.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K let his fingers rest in the drawer. “I think I saved your life once.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You did. When I swallowed all the baby aspirin.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Yeah, that’s it.” The druggist’s eyes focused, took on more light. “You’d crawled up on the counter, got into Lily Wendle’s medicine cabinet. Whole bottle. Ate them like candy.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I remember you holding my head over the sink.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Made you drink raw eggs and vinegar.” The pharmacist snorted. “\u003ci\u003eNothing\u003c\/i\u003e stayed down. Taught you a lesson, too.” He rolled the bank bag snug. “Think you can work for that man?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Guess I might see.” Manny pulled his pants higher. “Think I’ll be going.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDr. K nodded and turned to his shelves of pills and syrups. “Thought that rickety-ass salesman was supposed to drag in here today. I’m about out of thyroid.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe waited for the door to open and close before sitting back down on his stool and pulling out the pack of cigarettes he carried in his breast pocket. The smoke would help take his mind off of the truth laid out before him: a month’s worth of bills and not enough money to pay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe tapped the ash of his cigarette and considered the man who’d come in for Bag Balm. Myrta, the city clerk, had chippered away at anyone who would listen about the call she’d gotten from some man wanting to know about farm property for sale. “Sight unseen,” she said. “Didn’t even care to look at the place.” Buying without first walking the lay, weighing the dirt in your hand, seeing with your own eyes the well and tasting the water—beyond comprehension to anyone who made his living off the land. Dr. K couldn’t imagine what a physician might want with the Bateman place, but sometimes these people coming in from outside had funny ideas, had to find out things for themselves. With enough money and a little luck, you could make about anything work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe lifted the bank bag and weighed it in his hand. If the new doctor took away more than he gave, the store would be in trouble. It might have been enough for his father, who had tended the sick with even less and still made something of himself, but lately Dr. K had been thinking less about his father’s life and death and more about his widowed mother, who had moved to Kansas for reasons she couldn’t explain, except that in all the years she’d lived in the river canyon she hadn’t witnessed her share of sky. She was a ninety-year-old woman living two thousand miles away when she’d called him to say that her head hurt. The neighbor found her the next morning, dead of a massive stroke. Maybe he could have saved her, given her a few more years of life, had she stayed near. An aspirin, or a shot of whiskey at bedtime—sometimes it takes so little. What was left in Fife to keep him was little more than his name on the glass and the need he felt to mend and minister to the townsfolk he’d known all his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe began to whistle to fill the silence. A few more hours and he could make his way up the stairs to his apartment and turn on the stereo. Maybe he’d choose Verdi, or maybe Puccini. \u003ci\u003eMadame Butterfly\u003c\/i\u003e. How many times had he listened to the death song of Cio-Cio-San and cried as though it were a new sadness just visited upon him? He’d have some whiskey, and then some dinner. Maybe some of the venison Lyle McNutt had traded for his wife’s medicine. The druggist figured he’d eaten his own weight in deer roasts and sausage over the course of the year it had taken Tally McNutt to die. But it was good and tender and an easy trade for the drugs that erased some part of the woman’s pain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe’d have offered to feed Manny but the boy had always been shy of charity. Dr. K halfway envied such a life, unencumbered by anything more than the simplest of needs. Maybe working for Deracotte would change all that. A little money always begged for more. He hoped Manny would stop in, let him know how the job was going. Bring him a little news. Want another soda and stay long enough to drink it down.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You’re a lonely sack of shit,” he said aloud and nodded because there was no arguing with someone as stubborn as he was.","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301335978213,"sku":"NP9780307389114","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307389114.jpg?v=1767720385","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-country-called-home-isbn-9780307389114","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}