What are you reading this week of March 18, 2018?

[japple]

23. Rushing around, as usual, trying to get things in order before I leave town

for a trip to Texas.

Hi everyone and thanks, hermetic, for the weekly thread.

I got bored with 2030 by Albert Brooks, so I checked this out from the library: American Copper by Shan Ray

As Evelynne Lowry, the daughter of a copper baron, comes of age in early 20th century Montana, the lives of horses dovetail with the lives of people and her own quest for womanhood becomes inextricably intertwined with the future of two men who face nearly insurmountable losses—a lonely steer wrestler named Zion from the Montana highline, and a Cheyenne team roper named William Black Kettle, the descendant of peace chiefs.

An epic that runs from the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 to the ore and industry of the 1930s, American Copper is a novel not only about America’s hidden desire for regeneration through violence but about the ultimate cost of forgiveness and the demands of atonement. It also explores the genocidal colonization of the Cheyenne, the rise of big copper, and the unrelenting ascent of dominant culture. Evelynne’s story is a poignant elegy to horses, cowboys both native and euro-american, the stubbornness of racism, and the entanglements of modern humanity during the first half of the twentieth century. Set against the wide plains and soaring mountainscapes of Montana, this is the American West re-envisioned, imbued with unconditional violence, but also sweet, sweet love.

I must say that this it's quite obvious that Shan Ray is also a poet. His writing is fluid and luminous. It is a joy to read this beautiful prose and so nice to have a great book to read while on my vacation.