There is a new breed of novelists who specialize in mimicking the style of Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier being the most notable.
Parkinson also falls into this group of unfortunates.
"Across Open Ground" -the jacket illustration even mimics McCarthy's 'Cities Of The Plain'- is so derivative as to be laughable. Which I did, laugh, out loud several times so ridiculous is the sophomoric pseudo-prose.
This book reads like a ninth grade English assignment to read one of McCarthy's Border Trilogy books, and then do the best possible version of the story as a bad imitation. It's
like reading a parody of a parody.
The author gets so lost in bad attempts at aping McCarthy, her verbose descriptions of landscapes, sunsets and the characters cease to make sense. There is little continuity to this novel, and the author contradicts herself often in the plot and scenario.
This is bad writing. Very bad, and totally unoriginal.
If you haven't read McCarthy, please do so. Then, come back to 'Across Open Ground'.
While I laughed at parts of this book's stylistic absurdity, I was crying for the pain of reading it. The most interesting thing about this novel, is the lack of quotation marks. Sadly, another McCarthy stylistic trait, stolen and misused

The descriptions of the country, of horse and dog life, of sheep herding are often quite good, written with real authority. The book has a couple of well-realized and sinister bad guys. The first half is considerably stronger than the second half, and her male characters stronger than her female characters. The latter portions of the book become diffuse and the scenes dealing with a group of returning WWI veterans are not as strongly conceived as the earlier Idaho passages. She surely does set herself up for comparisons with McCarthy, who himself can get overwrought. Her main character is a young man on horseback coming of age. She wants to write in the high-literary style. But lots of the passages in this book are downright meaningless, amounting to less even than pure bombast, and the further one reads the more tiresome these passages become: As the highly negative reviewer writing just below me noted, there are problems with unity and focus, but there are also page-turning, tense portions of the book and several well-defined secondary characters. Some scenes are genuine, and not every one seems to come ready-made for movie adoption and screenplay "treatment" (though some do). There aren't that many good fiction writers out there, so here's hoping that she turns down the volume on her LITERARY knob and pays more attention to the basic necessites of narrative next time around. It's damn hard to write a good novel. I'll give her next book a fair chance.

This novel is quite good. And it's fun to read, even with some limitations. My favorite books are ones that make me think about the world around me and the experiences of people in it in new ways, and this one certainly does. The settings are evocative and shape a sort of scenery of the West as the novel unfolds, almost like a film. The characters make the novel though, and have a simple wisdom that is admirable and rare. From Walter Pascoe, the young shepherder who is becoming a man, to his newly discovered love Trina Ivy, a young woman whose sense of self is quite amazing in someone her age, to the man who teaches Walter about life as he understands it; each character adds something, and each one is interesting. The characters seem like people you know, or would like to (mostly, although even the antagonists are special that way).

Of course there are some inevitable comparisons with Cormac McCarthy- both authors write about the West as it was and maybe still could be if not for the exigencies of life, their stories both involve a mythic coming-of-age for young men, and they both have a smooth rythym that makes a kind of poetry of space with each turn of the page. And while it is notoriously difficult for young writers to instinctually develop a voice that is uniquely their own, McCarthy is an author worth emulating. As far as overdoing style, McCarthy is an estimable writer, and All The Pretty Horses is one of my favorite books, but sometimes McCarthy's writing can be a bit overwrought as well.

Every now and then, Across Open Ground does seem to be striving a bit too much for the "deep" thing when just keeping it so without such a carefully rendered explanation would have been enough. For example, one rather less-realized scene involves a group of soldiers on a train, and the spiritually bereft experience of war. This is one section where the dialogue isn't spare, but it seemed to miss something about men and how they speak to each other. The care that is evident is such places though(and there aren't many), also reveals itself in the construction of the rest of the novel. The story is enveloping, the characters endearing, and the dialogue has an even flow that makes the novel move nicely as you read it. And sometimes there is a certain sentence or a paragraph that asks to be read again and again, when the writing is damn good. Overall, Across Open Ground has much to recommend it, and is an enjoyable, involving read about life in the Old West and love and war and becoming an adult in a strange world. As a debut by Heather Parkinson it is very promising, and the author's next book will have me eagerly anticipating its arrival.

Eye of the Beast provided a great portrayal of the actions and crimes of James Wood. The only thing lacking was the past history that led Wood to act out in such a way. The book started after he had already been in prison for an earlier crime, but no insight into the development of beast inside. Regardless the book was a great read!

This is a well written book that I believe does a good job of exploring the life of James Woods. I recommend this as a good read for any true crime buff who is interested in serial murders.

This book was a must read for my family. We grew up with his family. The way the writer explained David Haggards involvement was great. It shows that family doesn't always protect family when someone is doing wrong. David is a very nice and gentle man and I am glad that the book did nothing to show differently. I have read this book twice and it has helped me to caution my daughter on how to not trust strangers. It also explains to her the dangers of people in this world.This book also shows the hard work and emotional toll that being a police officer takes on people. Even when they do their best it isn't always enough to make things safe. This world has some evil people in it that are often protected by the judical system.

The pictures, the comments, and the information in this book is top notch. The amount of information that is wrong in this book is minimal, and the same amount of wrong information can be found in all the other guide books for this area. I have climbed in the City of Rocks area for 5 years now, and this is definately a must have book for those new to the area, or exploring new sections of the area. As with any other guide book, the information is passed down from word of mouth most of the time, no focused group could ever hope to research the amount of information in this book. The pictures in here are awesome, and give the reader a much better idea what features to look for when hunting for a climb.

What some people mistake for innacuracies is actually accurate information about previous inaccurately recorded information about the City of Rocks. Inaccurate information has been in print for so long that people have assumed it to be the truth. Calderone's guide is not without errors, but it is THE most accurate and up-to-date guide ever written to the area. Calderone gets a lot of flack for his bold first ascents and the people who die attempting to repeat them. I don't neccessarily agree with his staunch tactics, but climbers shouldn't be at odds with his environmental stance or confusing these issues with his writing. You won't be dissapointed with this guide!

I've spent over 200 days climbing at the City of Rocks. I don't know if that qualifies me as an expert, but I do know a thing or two about climbing there. In all that time I've found one error in this book. A photo was reversed to an area that isn't even shown in any other guidebook (because nobody climbs there). I am a very discriminating and detail-oriented person, so that is pretty amazing. I happen to know a few of the old timers who climbed here before Forkash or Bingham. They are dumbfounded as to how calderone found out such things, but concur with his first ascent information. Amazing research! I don't know Calderone personally, but I saw him free-soloing routes on the Clamshell one day while I was climbing on the Lost Arrow. The guy is for real! As far as tact goes, the author doesn't get very high marks. You can tell the book is written from the heart. The guy is honest, if not a bit lacking in tact. Maybe he is full of himself, but I really don't care. To call this book "Top Notch" would not just be giving the author the break he probably deserves from the harsh sport climbing community. It is the truth.

This is a great arm chair book, but questionable as an on trail guide. I just did a 300 mile through hike in Idaho/Montana. I picked up this guide, in addition to Wolf's, because it was written for northbound hikers. It's great for at home reading. For use on trail: Good parts: -Strip map style *contour* maps, a big help -Current information Bad parts: -I am virtually certain that some of this was done from a car window. Examples: -The description of how to find the spring above Pattee Creek. This is an important source, in an unlikely place on a hill side. This guide's location description boils down to 'over there some place'. -The guide misses and never notices that there is good trail leading north to the Schultz Saddle, it walks you there on a road. -The within the text mileage figures, counting sometimes from section start, sometimes from other important way point makes nice reading, but bad on trail use. This sort of information needs to be in a (boring) table, to make it unambiguous and easy to figure from. ...Tom M (PCT '94)

Mr. Morgan, in a review below, says that the book was written for armchair reading, from the seat of a car and offers as proof the trail description near Schultz Saddle. On page 151 of the guidebook the text reads in part "The Forest Service has plans to cut a trail through the trees above the road to Gibbons Pass, but that trail was incomplete when we hiked the CDT..." On page 23, the author notes, "The Continental Divide Trail is a work in progress...Significant improvements have been made in the past two years and the pace of change is accelerating as interest in the trail increases. Sections of the trail have changed since we hiked them; more will change in the future." It's great that the trail from Chief Joseph Pass to Schultz Saddle is now complete, and I've heard that further work after the fires of 2000 improved the trail even more. This book shows interim, proposed, and alternate routes for the CDT and also tells the reader which routes are depicted correctly on maps. Extremely detailed information throughout the book confirms a step-by-step familiarity with the trail. While the mileage info is accurate, I agree that the book would benefit from the addition of a table showing landmarks and miles for each segment.

Great book that is a must for any hiker thinking of doing a CDT thru-hike! My friends and I found this book most helpful in planning our hiking trips on the northern part of the Continental Divide Trail. Charts and graphs are all top-notch. ( If there is a better guide book on the Northern CDT, I would like to see it!!!) Great color photos of each trail section in the book. ( There are 32 sections with all phone numbers of close by Post Offices, grocery stores, and cafes) I highly recomend this book for all section and thru-hikers! Mad Monte PCT thru-hiker and CDT section hiker

I found many of the stories enjoyable but the author tends to inject his own life into too much of the work which is distracting. The book would be better served by a cursory introduction followed by the many wonderful stories of everyday people (stories that I find much more enjoyable than any Hollywood could produce). Instead the author wraps his own life into many of the stories which creates more of a story about him instead of about the people. It would be better to get this book from the Library and try to skip over the self-promotion.

I have been a fan of David Johnson's newspaper columns for more than 20 years, but I always viewed them as isolated stories. By collecting them in a book -- and tying them together with his own life story -- Johnson shows them as part of a larger narrative. The setting is northern Idaho but the themes -- love, family, hardship, compassion and success -- are universal.

I read this book in just two days! It's enjoyable to read with plenty of light humor, but it also touches on deeper issues like love, family, faith, and personal loss. The author relates the lives of the people he interviews with his own life, and he shows that seemingly 'ordinary' people have something important to share with others. This book gave me a new appreciation for the people I come into contact with everyday.

Mother Teresa coined the term "the leprosy of the West" to describe the selfish trend of dumping the elderly in nursing homes where they can conveniently be forgotten or periodically described a receiving the best of care. Carol Lynn Pearson examines this disease in her delightful Yuletide story "A Stranger for Christmas."

The short tale may be somewhat predictable, lightly sugar-coated, and in certain cases a little less than plausible, but none of those debatable deficiencies is a crime. This allegory of two neglected little old ladies trying to prove that good people still exist among the modern day Christmas hustle and bustle leaves the reader with a very satisfied feeling.

In fact, I preferred 'Stranger' to the enjoyable, but in my view overrated modern classic "The Christmas Box." Amidst all the holiday habiliments, sneak an hour to read it, and you may completely re-prioritize your Christmas to do list.

A Stranger for Christmas was such pleasant reading. You'll want to meet the two old ladies and talk to them about their make believe friend. (Didn't we all have one of those at one time or another?) The book only covers a few days of real time, and takes only a couple of hours to read, but brought laughter, moments of sadness, and then tears of joy. My thanks go to Carol Lynn Pearson for providing such an enjoyable experience.

This book is a must for every family. We read it aloud several times over, with adults & children. All enjoy the story & it teaches us the real meaning of sharing & caring. Beautifully written. It will touch everyones heart.

As someone with an interest in Western American writing, I had high hopes for this book. However, the numerous awkward passages offset the occasional well-written scene. Overall, if you can hang with it for a couple hundred pages, the last third of the novel is the strongest.

What disappointed me most was the constant narrative self-references such as (I'm paraphrasing here...) "I guess it was the boy in me trying to be a man." Yes, the narrator is reflecting on his experience, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Ms. Barnes views on her own character were injected into his thoughts. Show me that he's a orphaned teenager struggling with growing up, don't tell me (at least not so many times!). Along with some rather flat dialogue, these kinds of passages really broke the immersiveness of the novel.

On the good side, there are a few scenes that are very well done, particularly the ones involving Caruso. The pacing is crisp; the characters (mostly the minor ones) unique, and the settings blend well with the action.

In the end though, I didn't find this novel to be memorable. It doesn't measure up to recent western novels such as Kent Haruf's "Plainsong", Claire Davis' "Winter Range" or Savage's recently reprinted classic "The Power of the Dog".

Literary novels don't usually have horses on the covers, though sometimes they do. This one does. Exceptional literary novels don't usually feature both country & western music and opera, but this one does. And this literary novel is one of the most carefully structured and beautifully written books you will read this year. Guaranteed.

Buddy Hope has fled Oklahoma, where his father's drinking and abuse has finally resulted in a car crash that has killed him and his wife. So orphaned, Buddy, who is 17, and his brother Lee, who's 25, set out for the West, for anyplace other than where they've been most of their lives. Anything's got to be better than what they've known so far. That they wind up in a north Idaho mill town, where Lee, with his skills at the guitar, his fine voice, and his way with women, attains something like happiness (though with Lee you can never tell; if you're not happy in your heart, you're probably not happy in your skin)is no more than dumb luck. But sometimes dumb luck's the best kind. Especially, as it turns out, for Buddy. Buddy is at loose ends. He's smart, sensitive, feels like something's wrong, but all he knows is Oklahoma wretchedness and little else. He lives with Lee in the back room at the Stables (based on a real and REAL hot bar/nightspot in the 50s in N. Central Idaho), sneaks mistake drinks and walks in the canyon. He's bound for a mill job, maybe. Or worse. He's bound for the kind of oblivion his father perfected into misery.

But into Buddy's life and into Snake Junction comes Irene Sullivan, a red-haired, stop-traffic beauty (if you get through this novel and you're not in love with Irene, talk with your doctor about . . . well, watch TV. You're hopeless) who's maybe twice Buddy's age. Irene's running from her past too, but unlike Buddy (and Lee) she's also sure about what matters in life--love and honesty and fairness. That's what she gives to Buddy: a real life. A life beyond willful redneck ignorance; a life where things like wine, opera, and fair play for people who aren't white is exactly the way it should be. She helps Buddy find Caruso--the singer and the horse. She helps him be the man who can be, not the man the world will allow. She's also the hero of this book. It's Buddy's version of the story, but Irene is the moral and ethical (and sensual) center of the book.

This story of Buddy, Irene, Lee, and the others in Snake Junction, as well as the voice it comes to us in (which is beautiful and skillful) is Buddy's. The whole novel comes to us as Buddy's memory. He's an older man doing the telling. And the skill with which he gives us the story has everything to do with what Irene gave him when he was 17. For if you can see there's a world where doing the right thing matters (even sacrificing what you care for most in the process), then when you decide to tell your story, as Buddy does, you'll want to do it as carefully and passionately as Caruso sang an aria, as Hank Williams wrote about heartbreak, as a salmon swims for home. Buddy's voice is the sanest you'll ever hear, and among the most honest. And also probably among the most deeply wounded.

What Kim Barnes does is make it all connect. This is no careless, plot-fueled, hopeful screenplay acting like a novel (though if Hollywood's not as dull as we fear it is, someone will make a magnificent movie from this book). This is the sort of novel people long for. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry, and when you put it down you will know in your heart that, pretty soon, you will want to read it again.

And then you'll tell a friend about it too. It's that good.

This is a beautiful book: the writing is stunning, always smart and always insightful. And it is a great story, the story of a young man whose love affair with an older woman provides him with a way to live the rest of his life. It's a book about choices and possibilities. It's a book about doing the right thing and believing that it matters. It's a book that shows us, and Buddy Hope, its main character, that there is a way to be a happy, ethical human being in this complicated, often unfair, but beautiful world of ours. FINDING CARUSO will often leave you breathless. You might cry as you read, but you will also surely laugh. And you will not likely read a better novel any time soon.

This is NOT A HIKING GUIDE. This is a MTB guide to Idaho, a
fact which eluded the previous two reviewers. THERE ARE time and
difficulty ratings for each trail. It is well done and worth
your time if you are into MTB and would be in Idaho. It also
has altitude changes for the rides. Very helpful. Enjoy.

The trail descriptions are great. The maps are great. The depth is great.

BUT, there are two things this book is missing that any good hiking book has. Each and every trail description in this book has a 'quick glance' section which lists a quick description, general location, maps, special attractions, difficulty, season and contacts for more information - BUT not trail LENGTH or an estimated time to complete! You have to read the entire description to find the length and probably won't find an estimate of the time required. Sure, this is OK if your friend recommended hike 'X' and you want to look it up. But, it is terrible if you are looking for a hike of, say, 6 miles that you can complete in 3 hours. It's just not readily available - you'd have to read the whole book! Even better, many guides have an index of sorts where you can see this information (and the availablity of backcountry campsites) for all trails at a glance, then go to the specific trail(s) that interest you.

This is what this otherwise great guide is missing. I returned mine and picked up 'Trails of Western Idaho' by Margaret Fuller instead - which does contain this information. Ms. Fuller's book is older (1992 vs. 1995 for this Falcon Guide), but not terribly so. She has some newer revisions for her other quides and I'm hoping this one will be reviced soon as well!

Falcon's guides are consistently good references to the areas they cover, and this is no exception. Reading it will inform you about the many excellent wilderness hiking opportunities in this beautiful state. For more specifics on an area, like the Sawtooths, also consider one of Lynn Stone's books, like Hiking Idaho's Sawtooth Country.

I haven't read a John Saul book in years, but I remembered him being very good, so when I saw this one at the swap meet I grabbed it right away. Unfortunately this book did not live up to my expectations. Like the previous reviewer, I fear that I may have drifted away from enjoying Saul's style.

I thought the writing in this book was really weak for the most part. Problem number 1: The plot was very basic and was stretched too thin. It may have worked as a short story or novella, but not as a 350+ page novel. Thus, in order to fill up the pages, we get lots of repetition (after reading the fifteenth detailed description of Joey's "urges," I was ready to throw the book across the room) and development of useless characters whose ONLY purpose in the story was to be killed in a gory fashion. I read the restored version of THE STAND right before this, and although THE STAND is 1200 pages long it contains far less useless/boring material than GUARDIAN.

Problem Number 2: The prose reeks of false drama. Nearly every chapter or section ended with an over-the-top dramatic sentence fragment. In addition, by the end of the book, most of the paragraphs were one-sentence dramatic statements. This is a great device to use once in a while to trigger a response in the reader, but it kills the tension when practically the entire book reads that way. I was actually laughing by the end of the book because it was getting so ridiculous.

Problem Number 3: This book is predictable! I guessed the two major "surprise" plot elements before the book was a quarter of the way through, and I am usually terrible at figuring out mysteries. Once you figure out what is going on, the story becomes a series of mindless death scenes. Again, I think this is the result of trying to stretch a perfectly good idea for a SHORT piece into an entire novel. The suspense for such a simple (and I don't mean "bad") idea just can't be credibly kept up for so long.

Problem Number 4: The end is unsatisfying, cliched, and an obvious set-up for a needless sequel. Come on John, we know you can do better than this!

I hope I'm not offending any John Saul fans out there, but I really think this novel needed more work before it was ready for primetime. The feeling I got reading this was that he was churning out a formulaic thriller simply for the sake of the dollar$ he would make. It felt like he was hardly trying. I guess that's okay, if you don't mind reading the same thing over and over from the same author, but now I'm scared to pick up any of his more recent stuff. Saul appears to have been stricken with the dreaded John Grisham Syndrome. Here's hoping he'll snap out of it soon.

I would have liked to give this book a lower rating than a 4, however, it is so well written then you can picture the events and during the story you grow to understand and like the characters so much, that it deserves at least a 5 just for that reason. No one can deny that Mr. Saul is a very good writer. The reason I reduced the rating is because of content. As I said, you come to genuinely care about the characters. There are a lot of children in the book, those are the characters I most cared about. The problem is that children start to get killed in particularly horrific manners -- one sweet child who died in the book, could have been spared and the book would have been fabulous. The death, a grisly one, was not necessary to the plot, and did not help in the building of the conclusion.

I was so upset by this book at the end that I swore I would never read another book by Mr. Saul.

This was the first John Saul book I have ever read. It Wowed me so much, that ever since I have be finding and reading anything and everthing written by Saul. The story is easy to read (with 1 or 2 slightly slow parts) and keeps you turning pages long into the night. The characters are very well developed and even though it is "supernatural" in contant he really leads you to believe that it is real. Let me say one thing, out of the 12 Saul books I've read, I have never been disappointed!

The book had a great storyline, but was too disjointed and jumped around far too much.For me that took a lot away from my enjoyment of the book. Maybe I'm just too picky, but this is my take on it.

I came across this book after reading an excert in another source and knew I wanted to read more of it. Concerned primarily with Iona Moon, a skinny dirt-poor farmer's daughter, and the teens she hangs out with (including boys who would be glad to be with her, if she meets them at the movies, buys her own ticket and leaves alone), this book at times approaches the lyrical in its description of human heartbreak. For a young woman searching for love, there are few good options - mothers in this book are dead - either emotionally or literally, and yet, they are also the healers and the "hopers" who provide the voice and the strength to go on - whether the voice of Iona's own dead mother or Pearl, the mother of her Indian lover who heals her with the taste of bitterness. This book combines the smallness of small towns with their narrow class structures and small minds along with the expanse of nature - rivers that run and skies that extend forever, working as a metaphor for the human heart that can dream large and wide, but must return to the narrow confines of the practical in life - where the cows need milking, the choices are few and the easist way out of town is not the road, but death. "Sorrow came in soft waves. She saw that the smallest sacrifices were the ones that drowned you in the end." Still, the book is as full of hope and heart as it is of heartbreak. Thought out of print, it is worth tracking down and reading.

This book is great, and an awsome read. It has it's funny moments of growing up, and discusses the things that everyone tried to forget when they were little. I was really sorry to finally be on the last page because i felt that i would be perfectly content to read forever the story of iona moon. out of the other books by Thon, i thought this was the best book she has written, and was delivered perfectly to a reader. Don't pass this one by!