Rating: 
Summary: "Taut thriller?" Think again.
Review: I would think that reviewers for Amazon would have a better developed attention span than the typical Nintendo teenager. Would also expect that he/she would be able to tell the difference between a successful literary novel and a genre thriller. Doesn't seem to be the case here. This reviewer should stick to Grisham, Sparks, etc.Winter Range is an accomplishment. The novel succeeds at what John Gardner (The Art of Fiction - look it up) terms a sustained and vivid literary dream that the reader can feel as plausable and complete as a representation of the real world. The characters are complex and rounded, not least because of the background that the author gives the reader that makes sense of their actions and behavior, and without appreciably stalling the forward motion of the plot. Chas would be just another cardboard cutout of a villain ( which the reviewer evidently prefers), but with an understanding of the wellsprings of his early life - dogmatic religion, emotional deprivation, etc; he becomes a believable person who reacts to his circumstances in a believable, destructive way. I was especially impressed with his positive qualities - innocence and charm - that made others doubt their negative reactions to him until he set himself apart from the community in an overt way. I liked the Iago-like sense of release and satisfaction he found in acting out his vengeance fantasies. I also found that the sense of self questioning in Ike to be refreshing and realistic. How many of us can make life and death decisions without reliving that moment again and again? Thats the stuff of "taut thrillers", not life - at least as I know it. I also loved the exploration of the relationhip that a rancher has with his cattle, and the intensity of emotion that corresponds with that relationship. I still occasionally have one of those nightmares that my cattle are starving and I am responsible and can't get to them - even though I haven't owned a cow in thirty years. The language of the novel is appropriate, beautiful and spare, the sense of the impact of the weather on the characters was reminiscent of "Snow Falling on Cedars" - a book that this novel is equal to in almost every way. It is well-paced and plotted, sustains interest and explores the communities of the hi-line very well. I can speak here because I was born and raised next to highway 2 in a typical cow-town such as was represented here. I have a couple of quibbles - Ms Davis, where in the world did you get an elk to that part of the country? The only elk I know of is a half-tame herd in the CMR game range that was planted in the fifties. Wouldn't a yearling steer have done the job? Second - Northeastern Montana is high plains (altitude above 2000 feet), not desert. Read this novel, it is very rewarding, powerful and deserves all the success that it can garner.
Rating: 
Summary: At Last: The West I Live In!
Review: In her stunning novel, WINTER RANGE, Claire Davis takes on some of the most powerful and wrenching issues that confront those who live in the American West today, such as changing economies, the roles of both women and men in farm and ranch economies, continuing migrations--both in and out, and questions about property ownership and responsibility. Although the story can be read as a gripping suspense novel, it also illustrates clearly how there are no easy answers for the complicated and sometimes painful lives of these richly drawn characters. This is a "must read" novel!
Rating:
Summary: Paradise frozen
Review: Paradise isn't lost in Claire Davis's debut novel, "Winter Range" -- but it's damn cold and likely a good day's ride east of Eden, Montana. Her setting is a frozen Hell in the New West, "a vast, ice-locked landscape" savaged by an unrelenting winter. Her characters are titanically common folks engaged in a power struggle for love , independence, redemption and the future in a windswept, eastern Montana town. And her plot is as old as Genesis, or at least Milton's version of it: a fallen hellion who pursues an imperfect woman's heart and mind as a way to regain his equilibrium, while her virtuous husband struggles to understand and control the world around him. But "Winter Range" is its own story, fresh and provocative. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff with a reputation for fairness, common sense, and kindness, but an outsider whose roots haven't yet sunk deep enough in Montana's soil. Like most folks in town, he knows Chas Stubblefield has fallen on hard times in the bleak winter, but the profound horror of it doesn't come clear until he sees Stubblefield's ranch on a bitterly cold night: starving cattle and horses freezing where they stand, grotesque mounds of snow hiding the carcasses of the dead. When he returns in the light of day to offer help, he finds a brooding Stubblefield near bankruptcy, living off the meat of his dying herd, too angry to see a way out and too proud to accept help. Chas is blinded to his own failings as a rancher. Bankers and suppliers have cut off his credit, and Chas's venom for them is poisoning his mind. "Better to reign in Hell," Milton said in a passage favored by the troubled Chas, "than to serve in Heaven." Between them is Pattiann Parsons, Ike's young, headstrong wife. She's a local ranch girl with a rebellious streak and a promiscuous past, which includes a sexual relationship with Chas -- a small detail she's hidden from her husband. She sees neither a devil nor a saint in Chas, and while remaining loyal to her husband, she surrenders to a perverse, nostalgic compassion for her one-time lover. Embittered by her father's decision to cede the family ranch to her brother, Pattiann still has strong ties to the land -- and all the human conflicts that arise from it. Davis's literary ethos rivals Larry Watson, Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. And "Winter Range" might be an even more poetic example of the new Western literature, in which landscape, climate and the earth make an indelible mark upon the human character. Its vivid details -- nicks in the local tavern's bar from eager silver dollars, the warm numbness inflicted by a rifle's recoil against a man's shoulder, the stinking steam rising from a hungry coyote's mangy back -- prove Davis is a writer who both embraces and transcends the boundaries of Western regional literature. Davis is earthy and as expansive as the Big Sky itself, but still poetic and evocative.
Rating:
Summary: Paradise frozen
Review: Paradise isn't lost in Claire Davis's debut novel, "Winter Range" -- but it's damn cold and likely a good day's ride east of Eden, Montana. Her setting is a frozen Hell in the New West, "a vast, ice-locked landscape" savaged by an unrelenting winter. Her characters are titanically common folks engaged in a power struggle for love , independence, redemption and the future in a windswept, eastern Montana town. And her plot is as old as Genesis, or at least Milton's version of it: a fallen hellion who pursues an imperfect woman's heart and mind as a way to regain his equilibrium, while her virtuous husband struggles to understand and control the world around him. But "Winter Range" is its own story, fresh and provocative. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff with a reputation for fairness, common sense, and kindness, but an outsider whose roots haven't yet sunk deep enough in Montana's soil. Like most folks in town, he knows Chas Stubblefield has fallen on hard times in the bleak winter, but the profound horror of it doesn't come clear until he sees Stubblefield's ranch on a bitterly cold night: starving cattle and horses freezing where they stand, grotesque mounds of snow hiding the carcasses of the dead. When he returns in the light of day to offer help, he finds a brooding Stubblefield near bankruptcy, living off the meat of his dying herd, too angry to see a way out and too proud to accept help. Chas is blinded to his own failings as a rancher. Bankers and suppliers have cut off his credit, and Chas's venom for them is poisoning his mind. "Better to reign in Hell," Milton said in a passage favored by the troubled Chas, "than to serve in Heaven." Between them is Pattiann Parsons, Ike's young, headstrong wife. She's a local ranch girl with a rebellious streak and a promiscuous past, which includes a sexual relationship with Chas -- a small detail she's hidden from her husband. She sees neither a devil nor a saint in Chas, and while remaining loyal to her husband, she surrenders to a perverse, nostalgic compassion for her one-time lover. Embittered by her father's decision to cede the family ranch to her brother, Pattiann still has strong ties to the land -- and all the human conflicts that arise from it. Davis's literary ethos rivals Larry Watson, Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. And "Winter Range" might be an even more poetic example of the new Western literature, in which landscape, climate and the earth make an indelible mark upon the human character. Its vivid details -- nicks in the local tavern's bar from eager silver dollars, the warm numbness inflicted by a rifle's recoil against a man's shoulder, the stinking steam rising from a hungry coyote's mangy back -- prove Davis is a writer who both embraces and transcends the boundaries of Western regional literature. Davis is earthy and as expansive as the Big Sky itself, but still poetic and evocative.
Rating:
Summary: Night Lights and Coffee
Review: The problem with having a day job is further exacerbated by books like WINTER RANGE. I stayed up way too late reading this wonderful novel, drank too much coffee and slept through my alarm. Read this book!
Rating:
Summary: Winter Range
Review: The story of "newcomer," Sheriff Ike Parsons, a Wisconsin dairy farmer's son, and one-time big city cop, and his wife, Pattiann, daughter of a local Montanan cattle rancher, has the genuine rawboned flavor of contemporary life in a rural community where life is folksy but complex and the folkways often harmful. "And he (Ike) wondered how long could a man learn, unlearn, and relearn before he came upon the thing that undid him? Storm. Drought, Age. The market. One year you're at home and the next--a stranger to the place you'd made for yourself. And maybe the best you could hope for in those instances was to find yourself, like Chas, still young enough to start over at something else." Claire Davis doesn't waste words, rather she uses them with a poetic vividness. Each line stands rich and firm--all senses are touched--and her similes and metaphores are delightful capturing your imagination and roping you into the scene whether or not you care to be there. Ultimately, your heart thumps like a kettledrum from the symphonic experience, yet you never lose the feel of the harshness of the winter range in east-central Montana. Snuggle up under the Big Sky and savor this one, again and again.
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