{"product_id":"the-willow-field-isbn-9781400034123","title":"The Willow Field","description":"After numerous essays, short stories and the heralded memoir \u003ci\u003eA Hole in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e, William Kittredge gives us a debut novel that ratifies his standing as a leading writer of the American West.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRossie Benasco’s horseback existence begins at age 15 and culminates in a thousand-mile drive of more than 200 head of horses through the Rockies into Calgary. It’s a journey that leads him, ultimately, to Eliza Stevenson and a passion so powerful, his previously unfocused life gains clarity and purpose. From the settlers, cowboys, and gamblers who opened up this country to the landholders and politicians who ran it, this is an epic tale of love and wide open spaces that stretches over the grand canvas of the twentieth-century West.“Startling beautiful. . . . So seductive you'll want to strap on spurs and light out for the territory.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“Powerful. . . . Reminiscent of Larry McMurtry's classic \u003ci\u003eLonesome Dove\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . Rich with vivid descriptions of the West.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Toronto Globe and Mail\u003c\/i\u003e“Kittredge is a first-rate thinker, gracefully slipping D.H. Lawrence, Mike Royko and an homage to Norman Maclean into \u003ci\u003eThe Willow Field\u003c\/i\u003e. . . .This is a book that many will cherish.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e“Beautifully composed. . . . Kittredge . . . has become a worthy successor to A. B. Guthrie and ‘The Great Montana Novel.’”—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eWilliam Kittredge\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of \u003ci\u003eHole in the Sky\u003c\/i\u003e, a memoir; two collections of essays, \u003ci\u003eThe Nature of Generosity \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eOwning It All\u003c\/i\u003e; and two collections of stories, \u003ci\u003eThe Van Gogh Fields \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eWe Are Not in This Together\u003c\/i\u003e. With Annick Smith, he edited \u003ci\u003eThe Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology\u003c\/i\u003e. A co-producer of the movie \u003ci\u003eA River Runs Through It\u003c\/i\u003e, he grew up on his family ranch in Oregon, studied at Oregon State University and the University of Iowa, and was Regents Professor at the University of Montana for decades. He lives in Montana but travels widely.Early Horses\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHorses, a junior high teacher told rossie's class, were an ancient   symbol of friendship. \"Horses are the amiable creature.\" This was the   spring Rossie became preoccupied with an incessant, secret urge to   jack off that disturbed and frightened him. At his mother's kitchen   table, as she weeded in her backyard garden, he sat nicking his left   index finger over and over with her sharp cutlery and tried to ease   his nerves by imagining the selfless companionability of old horses   nuzzling at one another. It was a way to think the world was easy to   live in. Training horses to ride and to pull chariots, he read in his   mother's \u003ci\u003eEncyclopedia Britannica\u003c\/i\u003e, was vital to the power of a   civilization called Assyria. \"Power,\" his mother said, wrinkling her   nose. \"Imagine. Your father would say it was the freedom to ride off.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Rossie turned fifteen—gangling and black-haired and shaving   every morning at the insistence of his father—he gave up on Reno   Public High School and drifted off to sit on high-board fences at the   Western Pacific stockyards. He helped out with the gates as men   jammed and cursed the bawling cattle until a whiskery man named   Fritzy Brewster gave him a chance horseback. \"Kid,\" he said, \"a   sensible boy don't work in the dirt. That's for farmers. A sensible   boy stays on his horse.\" Up on a bay gelding Rossie jostled steers   and heifers into chutes as Brewster uncapped a beer, sat on a fence,   and watched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRossie's mother, Katrina, when she discovered he hadn't been to   school since March, sat him down at the worktable in her clean,   tile-floored kitchen. \"What is it you most like about shit?\" she   asked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRossie went defiantly blank-eyed, and she shook her head.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I wonder,\" she said, \"if your father is going to let you do as you please.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNito Benasco supervised casino gambling at the elegant new Riverside,   George Wingfield's modern gambling and resort hotel on the banks of   the Truckee River, just a five-minute walk north on Virginia Street   from the Washoe County Court House. Women waiting out their weeks in   residence before divorce paraded the hotel lobby in spangled cowgirl   outfits, heading out for rides with buckaroos. Divorcees at the   Riverside, Katrina said, were fools who loved dressing up in gowns,   to sip at martinis and watch roulette. Women with college degrees   brought books in their suitcases and were likely to stay in a house   like hers, where they could be at home with other civilized creatures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"So,\" Nito said, when Katrina told him about the stockyards. \"What's   wrong with school? A man with no education is dead in the brain.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Algebra,\" Rossie said. \"X equals \u003ci\u003eb\u003c\/i\u003e. They teach you to be nobody.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You think the stockyards is somebody?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis, Rossie knew, was a moment to be faced carefully. Nito dressed   in dark suits and spent his hours standing back, watching the cards   and the roll of the dice and ivory balls spinning on the wheels. He   would say a quiet thing to a white-shirted dealer, then smile as he   went over to the drunk at a blackjack table, or the loud fellow from   Pennsylvania or Idaho who was running out of money. \"We don't worry,\"   Nito would say, \"do we?\" his eyes shining and his accurate hands   riffling the cards as if he loved them or suspected irregularity.   \"Making trouble. That would be a shame. We're a luxury liner, on the   banks of the Truckee.\" This was his joke. The game never stops, not   even for trouble. It's always here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I read books.\" Rossie drifted through summer evenings on his   mother's screened-in veranda above the Truckee, deep in Zane Grey and   the Charlie Russell book about life on the Montana frontier. He read   the books the women had brought and left behind, \u003ci\u003eThe Cossacks and   Youth\u003c\/i\u003e by Count Leo Tolstoy and \u003ci\u003eGiants in the Earth\u003c\/i\u003e by a Norwegian   whose name he couldn't pronounce, and \u003ci\u003eMy Ántonia \u003c\/i\u003eby Willa Cather.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Who kissed the girl? That's what those books are about,\" Nito said.   \"You need to know real things. That's what school is for. But you   don't like school.\" He smiled softly, like he had discovered a cure.   \"You should be with experts. We'll fix you up.\" He made calls on the   telephone, and three days later Rossie had a job as wrango boy on the   Neversweat, one of the vast Nevada empire ranches, on the Horse Fork   of the Humboldt River beyond Winnemucca. Nito bought Rossie a   classical Hamley saddle made in Pendleton—a secondhand rig with worn   bucking rolls and a high cantle—and he drove Rossie northeast across   Great Basin deserts in his immaculate black Chevrolet. Clouds were   massing in hammerheads above the lava-strewn Bloody Run Mountains.   Sweeps of thin rain would evaporate over the alkaline playa of the   Black Rock Desert before reaching the ground. Past Winnemucca, the   macadam turned to graded gravel, and alkaline dust drifted behind   them in a rooster tail. Nito slapped the palm of his right hand on   the dark velvet seat cushion and laughed at the print it left in the   white dust. \"She'll clean up.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOut front of the Neversweat bunkhouse, they unloaded the Hamley   saddle and a snaffle-bit bridle bought the evening before in a   Virginia Street pawnshop, then Rossie's clothes and bedding: a Hudson   Bay blanket, flannel sheets, a pillow without a case, denim shirts,   wool socks and long-johns, and old pairs of Levi's. Rossie's shaving   gear and a bar of Lava soap, two towels, and wash cloths were rolled   up and strapped together inside a canvas tarp with the bedding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNito eyed Rossie as if estimating a distance, then shook his hand for   the first time ever. \"You're where you want to be,\" he said. \"You are   going to be lonely. But it cures.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNito had come from Bilbao, Spain's largest seaport, a Basque city on   the northern coast. His parents had died of influenza in 1905, when   he was twenty. Nito's eyes shined whenever he told this story to the   women who stayed in Katrina's house.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My father's dream was that I should be a dealer in Biarritz, over in   France with the rich. A Gypsy named Caro was teaching me cards. Caro   taught me tricks. But there was no chance in Biarritz. I would be a   servant. Caro told me go to America, so I sat in New York rooms and   practiced cards all night and learned this language and here I am.\"   Nito would look around to the women awaiting divorce. Loneliness, he   would say, cures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This might be your road,\" he said to Rossie as twilight came over   northern Nevada and the Neversweat. \"But you can come home. You are   always our family. Your mother and I will also be lonely.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You think I'm going to quit?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This might not be the right thing. You'll know.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Bone-Handled Knife\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eStanding beside his gear, rossie benasco began to see the terms of   his new life as his father drove away. He was alone. In his soul he   was quaking.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was nothing to do but commence moving in. As he dropped his   bedroll onto a World War I military cot in a bunkhouse room nearest   to the bullpen with its barrel stove, Mattie Flynn showed herself.   Got up in a shirt buttoned at the cuff and shit-heeled boots, red   hair stuffed under her sweat-rimmed hat, this Mattie was not some   momma's sweetheart. Freckled and windburned, she was a horseback   girl, her long-fingered hands scabbed and callused. \"You don't sleep   there,\" she said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Good as any. They're all of them empty.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"They been gone eight days,\" she said. \"That's where Francis Church   sleeps. He's worked here twenty-three years and he sleeps there. You   better get your junk out of there. You get the last room down the   hall.\" When he was stowed away, she told him to come and eat.   \"There's nobody here but me and Rudy. He's cooking. The rest of them   are gone to the desert.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOld Rudy limped around and fried Rossie a patch of steak and two   eggs. Mattie watched while Rossie went at the food.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She's going to eat you alive, boy,\" Rudy said. \"She's done telling   me what to do. It's your turn.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMattie showed him the room above the kitchen where her father,   Slivers Flynn, lived when he wasn't on the desert with the cowhands.   Rossie opened a clasp knife with a white bone handle, copper rivets,   and a long, thin blade so often sharpened it was fragile like a razor   and sharp enough to shave hair off his forearm. Mattie said it was a   knife with history. Slivers had put it up to save. \"That knife,\" she   said. \"It's retired. He says that knife has done its work. He packed   it for eleven years.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt had been atop a chest of drawers, out where anybody could see,   beside a deck of playing cards still in the cellophane. When Mattie   looked away, Rossie slid it into his pocket and she was on him so   quick he wondered if this was some test he'd failed. \"I don't lie. He   knows it,\" she said. \"He's going to know you stole that knife. Your   ass is done for around here unless you give it to me, and I put it   back.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRossie fished the knife from his pocket, and she laid it beside the   playing cards.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I knew you was going to steal it,\" she said. \"I'd steal it if I was   you. I got a secret on you. If you knew one on me we could cut our   fingers and mix blood if we wanted to. But we don't. This is our   first secret.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHog Island\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMattie's mother had died on a summer afternoon when she was eleven.   Houseflies and yellow jackets, she told Rossie, walked the window   sills in the rooms where they lived, upstairs in the whitewashed   cookhouse. The pains of cancer drove her mother to fold Mattie in her   bony arms and curl up in her bed and howl. \"I don't remember,\" Mattie   said. \"I don't want to hear another thing about it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven a boy so short on experience as Rossie gave her credit for not   being able to bear recalling her mother's bedsores or that howling in   the afternoon. We all got to deal with dying someday, Rossie told   himself. It was the thing he'd known since he was a boy studying   stars in their configurations beyond the moon. Some distant day, he   already knew, he would face great trouble in himself, trying to   escape the thought that he was only another creature running for   cover and never getting there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSlivers and his hired hands had raised Mattie. \"She's a horseback   kid,\" Slivers would say, turning his eyes down to his hands, thumbs   together like they were at war against one another, \"ever since I   went single.\" Mattie dressed like a cow-camp tramp rather than some   girl, riding the greasewood deserts twenty miles out to the South   Fork of the Owyhee and never showing she was tired or even thirsty.   There was not much horse work she couldn't handle, nor talk she   hadn't heard as she tended a branding fire or drove a feed-wagon team   in the overcast light of winter. Mattie was willing to stare the   devil in the eye, and Rossie dogged after her on a Roman-nosed bay   named Snip as she galloped along willow-lined alleyways between   sloughs. \"You got a man's saddle,\" she said, \"but you're horseback   like a schoolboy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfter the desert branding crew came back, she'd chide him at the   dinner table. \"Look at him eat that spinach,\" she'd say, that sort of   thing—until one time Slivers shut her up.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You ought to watch your mouth,\" he said. \"Rossie is going to get   tired of acting like a kid. He's going to kick your ass. I'll be   thinking it's good work.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The big old man,\" Mattie said, and she gathered her dish of rhubarb   pie, and went to finish eating out on the side porch and away from   everyone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut then she'd ask Rossie about Reno, what it was like to try kissing   girls in movie theaters, if some of the girls went for it and kissed   back. Did Rossie go downtown and watch his father deal cards to the   rich men? She would tilt her head, trying not to make fun of him, as   if she really wanted to know what it was like.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003eWhen he was home for a visit, Rossie's mother watched him finish up a   load of breakfast pancakes and fried eggs in her immaculate kitchen.   \"Are you just being stubborn? Your father and I thought the desert   would cure you. We thought you'd come home.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Feeling fine,\" he said, licking the syrup off his fork, smiling at   her, lying a little, a boy sometimes sick for his mother and this   talk.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Well, then you can help me in the garden. Buckaroos help their   mothers in the garden.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \u003cbr\u003eOn a summer morning in 1933, in the shade of willows beside Hill Camp   Springs, Mattie bit at her lip, took the back of his neck in one of   her strong hands, and leaned in and kissed him. Rossie didn't keep   his hands to himself, and she didn't stop him. There was not a thing   to it in the beginning but the fucking. They'd gone vacant-eyed and   luminous. The lean, cigar-smoking woman who cooked for the haying   crew took to asking Mattie about her \"lovey-dovey,\" and though Mattie   acted like she might spear the cook with her fork while the hay-hands   smirked, she told Rossie she didn't care what anybody thought. \"Why   should we give a shit? You and me, we don't know no better. We're   kids.\" She wanted to tell her father, the king-of-the-mountain cowman   at the Neversweat, that they were in love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA champion of the world, one of those legends, Slivers Flynn was   thick in his chest and narrow-hipped, with a long spade chin, high   cheekbones, and huge, quiet hands. The men who worked for him, as   they put away beer by the case on the porch of the North Fork Cafe on   Sunday afternoons, talked about Slivers and balance and how he \"rode   them bang-tailed horses like they was rocking chairs.\" He had won the   1911 saddle bronc contest in Madison Square Garden, but by 1918, home   from the war in France, Slivers had quit thinking about the rodeo and   instead gentled horses around northern Nevada on contract. \"Sweet   horses,\" he would say, \"and damned few people. That's the deal. I got   out of their war in one piece but I'll run for the mountains if they   try sending me again.\" When the summer branding started in 1921, he   was put in charge of hiring and firing at the Neversweat. Nobody in   their right mind would defy him and not expect consequences, but   Slivers Flynn was as honest as God. Why shouldn't he be the boss?A Novel","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304745488613,"sku":"NP9781400034123","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400034123.jpg?v=1767742226","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-willow-field-isbn-9781400034123","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}