The Willow Field [Paperback]

William Kittredge has once again broken new ground, this time with a powerful first novel, a glorious epic of life in the American West in the early 1930s. As in his previous work, "A Hole in the Sky: A Memoir", Kittredge proves that he is a wordsmith of the first order. We are immediately involved intimately in the life of Rossie Benasco as he progresses from a "wrango boy" of 15, living horseback on the hardscrabble ranches of Nevada and California, to a well-respected man of wealth and power, an influential landowner in the starkly beautiful Bitterroot Mountains of Montana.

"The Willow Field" is full of hard lives and lives of luxury, loves and losses, Kittredge's own convictions, and perhaps most importantly of all, a panoramic view of the American West as it actually was in the setting of the early 1930s.

Definitely a marvelous read, one I found difficult to put down, and impossible to get out of my mind afterward. Kittredge has established himself firmly as a first-class novelist with this passionate book about Rossie Benasco and the Montana so beloved by them both.

In the 1930s, fifteen year old Rossie Benasco, son of the pit boss at the Riverside Casino in Reno, obtains work as a "wrango boy" at the Neversweat Ranch owned by retired rodeo star Slivers Flynn. He and his employer's daughter Mattie are attracted to one another so Slivers offers Rossie a choice. He can herd several hundred horses through Idaho and Montana to Calgary or he can marry Mattie and raise a horde of kids. Not ready for children, Rossie agrees to hit the trail.

At the end of the thousand mile journey, Rossie meets and falls in love with pregnant Scottish Eliza Stevenson. Her dad gives Rossie his Montana farm as a wedding present and soon she gives birth to a son that he adopts as his. The years go by, Rossie runs the farm and he and Eliza adopt a daughter. In December 1941 he enlists in the Marines, but is shot at home station and becomes a supply clerk. The years move on and so have their children

William Kitteredge is at his best with this homage to a bygone Americana rugged outdoors era. Readers will follow deeply Rossie's life from the 1930s as a teen through WWII on into the McCarthy period all the way up to 1991 when a "family" reunion with Mattie occurs. THE WILLOW FIELD is a superb slice of twentieth century Americana.

Harriet Klausner

This novel does a good job with people and the rest is not as good. Fortunately, there is a lot more of it about people than anything else. The latter part of the book is much better than the front part. At a third of the way through I was going to give it two stars, the middle third gained it another star, and only memories of the beginning kept the last third from raising it to five stars.

This is the story of a boy, Rossie, and the progress of his growth as he lives out his life in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana. Rossie begins as a cowboy in Nevada and remains a horseman all his life. After he encounters Eliza, she becomes a key element of the story. A number of other people enter the story at intervals and, as is the case in life, most remain more or less connected to the end. A few of the bit players are typical westerners, but the psyches of the main characters are too unique to call typical.

Kittredge is almost an icon of Montana literature, although this is his first novel. He has filled this book with a great deal of what he has learned about Montana over decades, perhaps he includes too much. There are countless descriptions of experiences, events, and geographical features recognizable by those familiar with Montana and its history. If you are an aficionado of Montana literature, you might want to read this book with a notebook at hand and see how many allusions you recognize to other books. Some Kittredge spells out and others are subtle. One of the more obvious is the Missoula minister who is supposed to marry Rossie; his name is Dr. McLean and "they're legendary walkers and fishermen, two brothers and the father." There are probably some references that were accidental but are simply part of Kittredge's vast knowledge of the state. If this book had a bibliography, it would be at least three pages; small type.

One weakness, especially in the front part of the book, is some inaccuracies in time and space. Even a novel should be careful how it treats such things. When trailing the horse herd through Oregon on the way to Calgary, how could Steens Mountain be to the east? A little later, the description of the horse drive jumps from the entry into Montana at Monida Pass all the way to Choteau. That is a gutless thing for the writer to do; there are a lot of miles and a lot of difficulty in that gap. In addition, the timeline from the beginning of the drive until Rossie arrives back in the Flathead Valley is not credible.

One last criticism concerns three vulgar words. Remove them and the novel would be pages shorter. Westerners used such words very sparingly during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, and almost never in mixed company. Their frequent usage damages the authenticity of story.

Readers of novels usually try to discern the messages or concepts the writer intends to convey. There is an interesting sentence near the back of the book: "People in Montana know what happened to the Indians, and they see that it's happening to them." Much of this book is about protecting what is wonderful about Montana from being ruined by people who don't take time to recognize those values. A connected concern is those people who move to Montana and bring along the very habits that made where they came from inferior to Montana.

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