CrowHeart - Hardcover

Gist, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0916781453 ISBN 13: 9780916781453

Publisher: High Sierra Books, 1999

Synopsis

CrowHeart is a novel set on a ranch amidst the winds of Wyoming. It is the story of the Daniels family, their relationship to the land, and tradtion mutating in order to survive. Sexual tension, memory versus reality, and personal identity are major themes in the novel. Rugged individualism degenerating into selfish folly is the timely and pertinent message contained in this story.

About this title

About the Author

John Gist was raised in Wyoming. After ontaining a degree from the University of Wyoming, he earned an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has taught English at a number of universities and The Art of The Essay to Athabascan natives residing in villages along the Yukon River. He has published poetry and essays in a number of literary magazines. He will be featured in the 2000 edition of Who's Who in the West for his achievements as a teacher and writer. CrowHeart is his debut novel.

From Publishers Weekly

Set on the harsh plains of modern Wyoming, this bleak debut novel is an overwrought and overwritten tale of family despair and self-destruction. Crowheart is a cattle ranch owned by the Daniels family, a dysfunctional group held together by blood, lust, guilt and their property's legacy. Jedidiah Daniels, the arrogant and lascivious patriarch, announces his engagement to Rebecca, a beautiful Indian woman 40 years his junior, setting off a soap-operatic series of sordid and desperate familial complications. Of Jed's four pathetic sons, Isaac is the most disturbed. He is an alcoholic graduate student who makes an amulet out of a dead horse's eyeball, is obsessed with thoughts of murder/suicide and is tormented by his incestuous relationship with his mother. Early in the novel, Isaac sleeps with his brother Gabriel's fianc?e, Cassandra, who's soon intimate with Jedidiah's wife, Rebecca. The tension, bickering and bitterness among the Daniels men and their unhinged women makes this an unconvincing and depressing tale. Everyone is painfully unhappy and unattractive (several drool in their sleep, and most are preoccupied with their bowel movements). Filled with sex, drugs and really bad music, this novel reads like a dingy episode of Dallas, without the glamour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: High Sierra Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0916781453
• ISBN 13: 9780916781453
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 301