Hell's Bottom, Colorado: Stories [Paperback]

Winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, Pritchett's debut is an admirable, steely-eyed collection of stories and vignettes featuring a family of ranchers in mountain-shadowed Colorado. Pritchett, raised a rancher herself, writes beautifully about the hard work and casual cruelty of ranch life. Forest fires, stillborn animals, poverty, cold and violence: all play as significant a role in the shaping of these characters as their emotionally hardscrabble family life. The three family groups that form the collection's core are brought uneasily together by an act of violence: the murder by her own husband, Ray of Rachel, youngest daughter of stubborn matriarch Renny. Some of the finest writing is in the stories about Rachel's children, Billy and Jess: "A Fine White Dust" chillingly illustrates their relationship with Rachel's abusive husband, and in "Dry Roots," one of the most painful and evocative stories, Billy and Jess come upon a horribly mutilated calf the property of a vicious neighbor and must make the decision to end its suffering. Pritchett's emotional revelations are often painted with broad strokes, as when Ben and Anita, estranged brother and sister, agree "that devastation looks pretty damn good from afar." But just as often, the writing is redeemed by fierce tenderness: "The wheat is starting to turn, flashes of deep gold streaking through tall, waving green....I suspect most city-folk... don't realize that wheat grows up green and living and then it dies, and that's when it becomes useful." Fans of Annie Proulx's Close Range: Wyoming Stories and Jon Billman's When We Were Wolves should enjoy this visceral, accomplished collection.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Adult/High School-A collection of well-crafted stories told by the members of a ranching family. Renny and Ben, after raising their two daughters, now live at opposite ends of the ranch, but miss the closeness they once shared. Carolyn, the elder daughter, is happily married, but just has to go to town because she knows an old beau has stopped there. Her daughter confronts her grandfather's hired man with a mixture of bravado and caution; son Jack takes his girl to Denver for an abortion, knowing they're too young to be parents, but determined to keep the pregnancy a secret. Rachel, Renny and Ben's younger daughter, is a battered wife who is eventually murdered by her husband. Their children, Billy and Jess, are adolescents struggling to find the courage to confront their cruel father. The stories jump back and forth in time, but their message is clear: this family's ties are as quixotic, fierce, and enduring as the land that binds them together. Teens will find this a moving portrait of the American West and what it takes to eke out a living from land that is as harsh as it is beautiful.

Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

With the rugged beauty of the Rocky Mountains as backdrop, Pritchett's spare yet richly evocative stories portray the stark reality of life on a Colorado cattle ranch, where three generations of one family tend the land and animals, devoting and losing themselves to an existence few would understand or choose to follow. Through love and loss, birth and death, marriage and separation, Hell's Bottom Ranch is a place of emotional extremes and complex dichotomies. Ultimately, it's also a place where simple beliefs create a world that can be as heavenly as it is harsh, as protective as it is predatory. Precisely drawn and fully developed, Pritchett's characters depict life in this diverse and dramatic environment through scenes that reveal both the beauty of the native landscape and the brutality of man's and beast's struggles to exist within it. Regardless of whether the songs she hears are sung by a meadowlark or a jailbird, Pritchett excels at juxtaposing the sensuous with the severe, the rapturous with the repugnant. Carol Haggas
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"Set in the unpredictable West, these stories remind us that we cannot escape the messiness and obsessions of ordinary life." -- Patricia Henley, author of

Winner of the Milkweek National Fiction Prize, in this collection of linked short stories, Laura Pritchett balances gritty material with genuine warmth and understanding of character. Hell's Bottom is more than a ranch. Home to Renny, one of those women who prefers a little Hell swirled with their Heaven, and her husband, Ben, who's gotten used to smoothing over Renny's excesses, the ranch has been the site of births and deaths of both cattle and children, as well as moments of amazing harmony and clear vision. A day of haying turns violent in A New Name Each Day, while in Rattlesnake Fire, Ben and his estranged sister must decide whether to put aside their differences to save families trapped by a forest fire. In Pritchett's masterful hands, the western landscape becomes a zone of familial crisis and, sometimes, transcendence.

On Hell’s Bottom Ranch, a section of land below the Front Range, there are women like Renny, who prefer a "little Hell swirled with their Heaven" and men like Ben, her husband, who’s "gotten used to smoothing over Renny’s excesses." There is a daughter who maybe plays it too safe and a daughter plagued by only "half-wanting" what life has to offer. And, there are grandchildren who wonder what’s the word for being related when there’s some love and some hate. The ranch has been the site of births and deaths of both cattle and children, as well as moments of amazing harmony and clear vision. Focusing on one extended ranching family in Colorado, Laura Pritchett balances gritty material with genuine warmth and understanding of character. In her masterful hands, the Western landscape becomes a zone of familial crisis and, sometimes, transcendence.

Laura Pritchett was reared in the shadow of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and has recently returned to live with her family in Ft. Collins, Colorado. This is her first book.