Hole in the Sky
A Memoir
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- £8.49
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- £8.49
Publisher Description
William Kittredge's stunning memoir is at once autobiography, a family chronicle, and a Westerner's settling of accounts with the land he grew up in. This is the story of a grandfather whose single-minded hunger for property won him a ranch the size of Delaware but estranged him from his family; of a father who farmed with tractors and drainage ditches but consorted with movie stars; and of Kittredge himself, who was raised by cowboys and saw them become obsolete, who floundered through three marriages, hard drinking, and madness before becoming a writer. Host hauntingly, Hole in the Sky is an honest reckoning of the American myth that drove generations of Americans westward -- and what became of their dream after they reached the edge.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The author's grandfather, William Kittredge, began in 1911 to amass what he thought would be paradise for himself and for his descendants: a cattle and farming empire of more than 15,000 acres in the Warner Valley of southeastern Oregon. He reshaped the land and his family to fit the dream. But within the span of three generations, this willed Garden of Eden, which once had drawn the powerful and famous, fell into disarray. The author recounts the destruction not only of the land but of his family and, especially, himself--his flights into alcohol and extramarital affairs. Kittredge ( Owning It All ) parlays vivid prose and storytelling talent to produce a powerful indictment of materialism and its capacity to undermine the spirit and dissolve human connections with the universe.
