Little Century
A Novel
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- 52,99 lei
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- 52,99 lei
Publisher Description
In the tradition of such classics as My Ántonia and There Will Be Blood, Anna Keesey's Little Century is a resonant and moving debut novel by a writer of confident gifts.
Orphaned after the death of her mother, eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she's met by her distant cousin, a laconic cattle rancher named Ferris Pickett. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin by a small lake called Half-a-Mind, and there she begins her new life as a homesteader. If she can hold out for five years, the land will join Pick's already impressive spread.
But Esther discovers that this town on the edge of civilization is in the midst of a range war. There's plenty of land, but somehow it is not enough for the ranchers—it's cattle against sheep, with water at a premium. In this charged climate, small incidents of violence swiftly escalate, and Esther finds her sympathies divided between her cousin and a sheepherder named Ben Cruff, a sworn enemy of the cattle ranchers. As her feelings for Ben and for her land grow, she begins to see she can't be loyal to both.
Little Century maps our country's cutthroat legacy of dispossession and greed, even as it celebrates the ecstatic visions of what America could become.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keesey debuts with a confidently energetic tale of an 18-year-old orphan who leaves Chicago to eke out a new life for herself in Century, Ore., at the turn of the 20th century. Esther Chambers arrives knowing little about the West, but cousin Ferris "Pick" Pickett a cattleman and embodiment of the independence and enterprise of the frontier sets Esther up in a cabin on the shores of Lake Half-a-Mind with plans for her to homestead till the land becomes a part of Pick's holdings. As Esther acclimates to a life of hard work which Keesey evokes in economical and striking images she comes to love the land and its inhabitants, learns to ride a horse, and falls for a sheepherder, the enemy of the cattleman. When factional conflicts erupt in violence, the harsh realities of cowboy justice and life in the West come to light, forcing Esther to choose her loyalties carefully. While Keesey offers a variety of characters with intriguing stories of their own, it is the richly depicted setting from desert to dry goods store that showcases her talent.
