cover image SMALL ROCKS RISING

SMALL ROCKS RISING

Susan Lang, . . Univ. of Nevada, $17 (235pp) ISBN 978-0-87417-504-2

With an unconventional pioneer woman as its heroine, Lang's earnest, nostalgic debut novel explores the satisfactions of learning how to tame the wilderness. A homesteader in the 1920s, independent-minded Ruth Farley stakes her claim to a Southern California canyon, optimistically renaming her parcel of land Glory Springs. As she struggles to clear the land for building, a hard-to-move boulder becomes a metaphor for the struggles she faces in coping with querulous fellow homesteaders, dangerously aggressive men and her dawning romantic feelings for a local Indian. The desire for freedom pervades this tale of woman against environment—freedom from oppressive social conventions and particularly from other people's ideas of femininity. Lang's writing can be fluid and evocative, especially when she's describing the landscape and the practical challenges of living in the wilderness. The more human elements of the story, however, feel a bit forced. Some awkward dialogue, a certain didactic element (passages on rabbit-skinning or deer-gutting read like a how-to-survive-in-the-canyon manual) and an overarching sentimentality about Ruth's mission make much of the material seem like a sexually charged high school history lesson on the American West. Still, readers who enjoy frontier history or rebellious heroines will find satisfaction in Ruth's determination "to make her way like a man was allowed to do" and in Lang's knowledgeable depiction of homesteading life. (Apr.)