Great Plains Regional Roundup

Over the Mountains And Plains

The Wild West Lives The Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo drew 400,000 visitors to that Wyoming prairie town last July. In all of 1999, 1,100 rodeos around the country attracted 18 million people who spent $80 million in ticket sales. That's a big potential market for Roughstock: The Toughest Events in Rodeo (Four Walls Eight Windows, Oct.), which contains 110 color images by photojournalist John Annerino of Tucson, Ariz. "To the best of our knowledge there's no other full-color book on rodeos, and that's an amazing gap in Americana," said publisher John Oakes. "John's photos are filled with genuine action and a genuine American style. He has African-American cowboys, women cowboys, Native American cowboys. They're all part of the rodeo fabric." One of the photos captures a woman on the back of a bull, waiting in the chute before being set loose for her eight-second ride. "A bull is the only animal in a rodeo who'll try to kill the person riding it," Oakes commented. "It's amazing to see this woman, a glove on one hand, and on the other, her pink nail polish matches her chaps."

In This Article: The Wild West Lives Going to the Dogs Tuning in the Radio Courting Colorado Cooking Up Success Refreshing the Classics Utah Days Saying Cheese a Century Ago Getting Cold Feet

Going to the DogsRanch hands can usually use a little help, and often their assistants are of the canine persuasion. Marianne Murdock celebrates these four-footed helpers in Ranch Dog: A Tribute to the Working Dog in the American West (Willow Creek, Aug.). With photos by Nancy Burgess, the book demonstrates the animals' personality, loyalty and love of job. "I visited 13 ranches in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico," said Murdock, "all of which use dogs in their daily work. Some are herders. Some are guard dogs." There's even a catch dog that g s out and steers a cow where it should go. Each ranch has its own chapter and each chapter has a descriptive essay and a p m. "Six of the p ms are by me," Murdock told PW, "and the rest are by other cowboy p ts." The most unusual dog she encountered was Aussie at S Bar S ranch in Kamas, Utah. After just one working session, Aussie could identify each horse in a herd of 60.

Tuning in the RadioJohn Dunning, whose earlier mysteries, The Bookman's Wake and Booked to Die, are on their way to culthood, turns to the early days of radio in his latest novel, Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime (Scribner, Jan.). Dunning, who lives in Denver, is one of the speakers for M&P's Author Banquet for Literacy. "John's first books have built up a tremendous market for first editions of modern mysteries," noted Susanne Kirk, v-p and senior editor, S&S/Scribner. "A first edition of Booked to Die sells for about $800 on bibliofind.com. Those books were based to some extent on John's experience as an antiquarian bookseller, but he is equally expert on early radio, and Two O'Clock Eastern Wartime is based on that knowledge." According to Kirk, "This is bigger in scope than John's other novels--a very ambitious suspense story with strong romantic tension."

Courting ColoradoJan and David Smith have more than one hat to wear. For 11 years they've operated Buckskin Booksellers in Ouray, Colo., specializing in books about Colorado--although they stock bestsellers as well. Engaging their knowledge of their state more deeply, they joined forces with another couple four years ago and began releasing books under the Western Reflections imprint. "We're publishing all kinds of books--fiction and nonfiction, history, p try, photography--all of them related to Colorado. That's our niche," said Jan Smith. Recognition has come quite quickly: Western Reflections won M&P's Dwight Myers award for excellence in publishing for 2000. Among the books the company will feature at this year's show are Historic Aspen: In Rare Photographs by Christian Buys, More That I Never Knew About Colorado by Abbott Fay and Colorado Avalanche Disasters by John Jenkins. "The new book by Abbott Fay follows I Never Knew That About Colorado, which has sold about 15,000 copies," Smith remarked. "Did you know that Hitler once owned a ranch in Colorado? Or that one day it snowed ducks at Eisenhower Tunnel?"

Cooking Up SuccessIncorporated in 1996, Peppermint Press was the brainchild of two former elementary school teachers, Carol Faino and Doreen Hazledine. The first fruit of their labors, which debuted at M&P that year, was Colorado Bed & Breakfast Cookbook, which visited 85 B&Bs throughout the state and reprinted 142 of their recipes. "That was so successful that we sold out the first 5,000 copies and had to order 10,000 more," said Hazledine, who lives in Denver. "By now we've sold 35,000." After a new job for Faino's husband took that half of the duo to Seattle, Peppermint Press issued Washington State Bed & Breakfast Cookbook in 1998 (10,000 copies sold). "We've been working on California Wine Country Bed & Breakfast Cookbook," Hazledine said, "although we're holding off a little because last March we signed with the Jane Rotrosen Agency."

Refreshing the ClassicsAt 41 years of age, Pruett Publishing is breathing new life this fall into several well-established books. "Tomboy Bride by Harriet Fish Backus came to our company about 28 years ago," said publisher Jim Pruett. "The author, who's been deceased for 25 years or so, originally self-published her turn-of-the-century memoir about life in Telluride when it was a raucous mining town. My father contracted with her for our edition." The new version of Tomboy Bride has a foreword by Pam

Glimpses of life then and now (Willow Creek, Pruett, Univ. of Kansas).

Houston and an afterword by a nephew of Backus, who tells what happened after the book concludes. "This has become a regional classic, selling close to 60,000 copies," Pruett said. This fall he will reprint The Bright Country by Denver journalist Harry Middleton. "In this book, he plays his unhappy city life against his joy of fishing in the mountains," Pruett explained. "His The Earth Is Enough is one of our bestsellers in the last five years."
Utah DaysWith many of the world's greatest athletes making plans to visit Utah, Shadow Mountain provides a preview of what's in store with Salt Lake 2002: An Official Book of the Olympic Winter Games (Nov.), with photos by John Telford and text by Lee Benson and Susan Easton Black. "The book tells the story of the bid process, including the pain of the bribery scandal and how that is resolving," said Emily Watts, director of the Bookcraft imprint for Deseret Book Co. "It showcases some of the wonderful natural geographical features of Utah, not just Olympic sites, but also the national parks and other scenic marvels." Venues and events are also covered among the more than 75 color photos. Other views of the Beehive State are contrasted in Utah: Then & Now (Westcliffe, Sept.), which has contemporary photos by Tom Till alongside historic images of the same perspectives by earlier photographers; accompanying essays are by Ted Wilson.

Saying Cheese a Century AgoParades, swimming parties, prostitutes, shop windows, farmers at work--these and many more old-time scenes are captured in Our Town on the Plains: J.J. Pennell's Photographs of Junction City, Kansas, 1893- 1922 (Univ. Press of Kansas, Nov.) by James R. Shortridge. Since most people didn't own a camera in those days, they relied on commercial photographers to record their experiences. "There are about 20,000 photos in the Pennell collection in the University of Kansas archives," said Press director Fred Woodward. "It's one of the top five commercial collections in the country." Those selected for the book "give you a comprehensive documentary picture of a town over a 30-year period," he remarked. "As we all get more wired, it becomes more interesting to look back at a world that was unwired."

Getting Cold FeetWhen Snowsh ing Colorado was published two years ago, Fulcrum raffled off showsh s at the M&P show. Claire Walter, who lives in Boulder, has updated and expanded the book, and Fulcrum will again raffle off a pair of snowsh s this year. "Five years ago, when you were out on backcountry trails, if you saw one person in 15 or 20 on snowsh s, that was a lot," said Walter. "Now it's about 50-50 between people on skis and people wearing snowsh s." The average price of snowsh s is $200, so it's a pretty affordable sport. And as for degree of difficulty? "If you can walk, you can snowsh ," said Walter. At M&P, Fulcrum is also giving away a poster emblazoned with a painting of John Wayne--as he appeared in 1956's The Searchers--to promote The Hollywood West: Lives of Film Legends Who Shaped It (Aug.), edited by Richard W. Etulain and Glenda Riley.
--Robert Dahlin

The First Fiction Scene Period tales set in Colorado and Kansas (Doubleday, Putnam). A Colorado mining town during the Great Depression is the testing ground for a doctor's wife who confronts the ravages of her marriage and the sordid secrets of the town itself in The Mineral Palace (Putnam, Sept.) by Heidi Julavits. "I grew up in Maine and live in Brooklyn," says Julavits. "My only connection to Pueblo [Colo.] is that I had a grandmother from Wisconsin who lived there in the 1930s. The book is loosely based on her experiences. Actually, she was a very pleasant woman, but she hated it in Pueblo and that interested me. It seemed that there must have been something about the place that was dark and despairing." Asked to describe her novel, Julavits says, "There's an infanticide aspect to it, and it's about a marriage, about a man and woman who are alienated and living in a strange climate that puts the differences between them in bold relief." Goats(Talk Miramax, Feb.), a debut novel that challenges conventional ideas of family and home, is set in Tucson, Ariz., where author Mark Jude Poirier grew up (he now lives in Portland, Ore.). In the book, 14-year-old Ellis gets ready to leave the Southwest for a boarding school in the East, which will mean leaving behind his mother and the only father figure he has ever known. The Goat Man, who lives on the property, raises goats and plans a trip across the desert with Ellis when he returns home on spring break. Arizona also lays out its landscape in The Price You Pay (Southern Methodist Univ. Press, Oct.) by Ellen Winter, a volunteer firefighter living in Mormon Lake, Ariz., outside Flagstaff. Other stories in her collection stretch out as far as New England. Gabriel's Story(Doubleday, Jan.) by David Anthony Durham--who lives in Sunderland, Mass.--takes place in Kansas in the 1870s, as a young black man comes of age on his family's homestead and subsequently gets mixed up with a misfit band of cowboys, an association that leads to trouble. Born and raised in Wichita, Kans., and now living in southern California, Scott Phillips is "a very concise, psychological writer who's in the noir tradition," says Dan Smetanka, Ballantine senior editor. In The Ice Harvest, Smetanka continues, "he has really captured Wichita on one Christmas Eve in 1979, as a lawyer who wants to get out of town with a suitcase of stolen money hits the strip clubs and bars." It's a book in which everyone has an angle, but not many of them are on the square. James Crumley's blurb says that the novel is "a razor sharp slice of Midwestern lowdown life that makes American Gothic look like a honeymoon." Although set in Montana (which is primarily PNBA territory), Winter Range (Picador USA, Sept.) by Claire Davis has attracted a good deal of attention in the Mountains & Plains region, so much so that it will be featured on M&P's holiday catalogue cover. In it, a rancher fallen on hard times seeks revenge against an honest sheriff whose efforts to help have only made the rancher angry and bitter. Davis lives in Lewiston, Idaho. --Robert Dahlin Top