I am rewriting my Utah historical novel, Tributary, for the last time. It will be published late this year. The first draft arrived in 1992. Only now, at age 55, with all of the events that have happened since I began, am I able to give my character Clair the full power and range of her voice.

The most recent and remarkable life event came three weeks ago when I accompanied a Shoshoni healer, Rose Soaring WhiteEagle, to the Washakie graveyard thirty-five miles north of Brigham City. Rose was born in Brigham as were both of my parents, and all of my Mormon ancestors who displaced the Shoshoni from their lands. Tributary is set largely in Brigham City and northern Utah.

Traveling with Rose in this deeply loved land, boundaries dissolved. She and I blessed the graves, marked and unmarked, of her ancestors at Washakie. I sang a lullaby in Shoshoni to the twenty children buried there. Animals and spirits guided us, because we asked them to. No act was taken without first asking.

This generosity is the generosity of the land.

This way of living counteracts a separate self.

Spirits in these latter days, and the healing has begun.

Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park yesterday, I sang—heaven help me—“Rocky Mountain High." I pondered a Henry James novella I’d just read, “The Beast in the Jungle.” Because I wore brown-tinted sunglasses, the beetle-kill pines stood out on every slope, and I could not feel anything but implicated in and convinced of our changed planet.

In James’ story, the hero John Marcher misses the event of his lifetime. He feels chosen by an obscure destiny, waiting as if anointed for some beast to leap onto him and render his life profound. May Bartram, the only friend who knows of his obsession, stands beside him for decades, waiting, but Marcher’s self-absorption is so complete he only realizes when flinging himself on May’s grave that he has missed out on her love. That was his unrecognized beast.

The twists and turns of James’ syntax far exceed plot points, and I dismissed “The Beast in the Jungle” as a windy staid study in the human ego; profound—the beast is within not without us—and a dated sleeper written by a man who spent all his time indoors.

But as I hiked the thousand feet up toward Lake Helene, surrounded by vast browning slopes, the power of his novella came at me from an unexpected quarter, haunting my climb. James’ protagonist fit perfectly our environmental dilemma: we cannot really love the earth, though it offers itself, so we use it and simultaneously feel cut off from it, valuing our self-importance more than the opportunity to genuinely live, which makes us unable to stop pillaging, unable to stop missing the point, and we're just about to throw ourselves on its grave in misery and cowardice, like James' hero. Empty, when what is offered us is so full.

I have found no good way to face such a grand-scale environmental demise. Which leaves me in the Jungle with John Marcher.

Whatever you can do to plunge into this love, do it now.

At a writer’s party last night, a discussion about parenting leapt a generation and an ocean. The dead spoke to the living. This is why I love literature.

We had all been asked to bring a favorite passage to read. In the high Boulder dusk after an eclectic potluck dinner, books came out and pages from Rushdie and Eisley and M. F. K. Fisher were read aloud by lamplight. Topics ran the gamut. Several touched on parenting, and two in particular collided nicely.

E. M. Forster wrote, in Where Angel’s Fear to Tread, that unconditional love ran from parent to child but could not reverse the course, from child to parent. A child loved but not unconditionally. The geology professor from Texas who read this passage said she didn’t know if she agreed with him, but it had set her thinking. She had sons. She wondered if she loved them more than they loved her . . .

Later, we heard a passage from Nicole Krauss’ Great House, in which a father says he ceased to be the center of the universe with the birth of his second son. Being a parent removed the veil of self-importance for good. He wasn’t a model parent, by any means. The birth of his first son triggered no such understanding. Parents fail to show up for duty. Many resent what’s asked of them.

At night’s end, people remembered these two passages as contradictory. Wasn’t it interesting that Krauss and Forster disagreed? To me, they’d said the same thing: it is human to love the self until parenthood blasts you beyond self-interest. If children loved their parents unconditionally, they would never individuate. Parents feel devotion to protect and preserve; children feel devotion to the calling world. And so parental love is a repeating wave, a generational movement from self to selflessness. The decades of a life determine which part of the wave you are riding.

Krauss spoke to Forster. We rode the waves. Makes me want to roll up my sleeves and get bookish. Makes me love the Rouault lithograph that hangs in my stairway more than ever. Its title is “Have Mercy.”

Many thanks to Lisa Jones for collecting us all around her festive table last night.
And thanks to Dreamstime for the book/wave photo.

One thing I would like my novel Tributary to have, which my first novel Guest House did not, is professional reviews. I loved the reviews that Guest House readers posted online. There were many, they had a big impact, and I appreciated every one. They gave Guest House a large rich presence in online bookstores and on my website. Thank you so much for that.

And now it’s time to find authors and professional reviewers for Tributary.


Here’s where the angels come in.


If you know a published novelist, or a literary reviewer, or have a favorite feature writer/reviewer in your local paper, or read a magazine with book reviews, would you consider letting them know about my novel? Tributary follows the life of Clair Martin, a misfit in 1870s polygamous Utah, who sets off for Mississippi in search of her kin. Steady humor and keen instincts sustain Clair through multiple trials. Tributary explores a deeply human spirituality we all share.

If you need more info, I’ll be glad to send you a longer book description, just request it. And you can mention my website, to give folks a sense of my earlier novel Guest House: www.barbarakrichardson.com. I do hope Clair and company find their way to the light of popular notice.

Thanks so much for any clues or leads you send my way, and/or fan mail you send to those you know in the book business. Writers can’t make any headway in isolation. We live to share. I can’t expand the readership for Tributary without you. Start flapping those wings.

They make a lovely sound, like unnoticed weeds in a free open field,
setting seeds.

You can't keep a good thing down.

It's nature's way. This tree, having endured heaven knows what death-dealing impact, sprang to life this spring, as trembly green and fragrant as all its compadres on the creek trail by the peacock farm at Greenbelt Meadows, near my home.

Ah, greenbelt. Ah, meadows. Ah, forming oneself around and with and through the blows dealt in the course of growing up. That is why I love trees: they don't mask their injuries, they capitalize on them, when they can.

My novel Tributary, the one that took twelve years and nearly a hundred drafts to complete, the one based on my Mormon pioneer ancestors, the one that's been sitting in a closet for six years recovering from the blow of non-interest by the publishing world, just sent trembly green and fragrant leaves out to dapple my trail. It has a publisher. Torrey House Press will print Tributary by Christmas.

Which makes me mighty glad.

Newsweek says this is The Mormon Moment. The Mormon Moment apparently extends to the literary world, as well. Stay tuned, as I'll be updating my website this summer—with photos and excerpts and such from Tributary—in preparation for the holiday launch.

Take heart. If you live through the heart-stopping difficulties, they can form and strengthen and even liberate you.

Life needs your sap, your dappling of the path, your instincts, your particular expression of this momentary joy.

If you love books and want cohorts with whom to share the wealth, try Goodreads. Authors and readers review books, swap tales and grow communities of like-minded readers. It's a great way to track the books you read, and encounter new books reviewed by others. I've discovered some great new titles scanning the reviews of my Goodreads friends.

It's cool reading brief reviews from your favorite authors, as they read through their own book stacks, day-to-day. There are also author events and book giveaways, a chance to win new releases.

Here's my latest book review, on Father Greg Boyle's "Tattoos on the Heart." If you join Goodreads, send me a hello/invite, so I can follow your reviews as well.

I just received my second royalty check for GUEST HOUSE. The checks come every six months in a large white folder packed with info and joy. I sold 213 copies between December and May. In many circles, those are small potatoes. The way I figure it, "I am a few miles luckier, a few clouds wealthier, a few shoes humbler," and the small potatoes are the sweet ones. With red jackets!

So it's time to say thank you to everyone who has purchased a book, atttended a reading or cheered from the sidelines. I am grateful to you all.

If the fates are kind, another novel will emerge from the potato patch. Right now it's rooty research and dreams...

I’m going to brag a little about my new client. Torrey House Press aims to discover and publish the new writers of the West, thereby winning hearts and influencing people to care for the land. 

It’s like I reached up into the heavens and pulled down my perfect job description—help further the careers of great writers who love the American West, watch their books get born and then plan really great launch parties for them!

Mark Bailey and Kirsten Allen are mavericks. They’re starting a press at a time when publishers are crashing all around us, book review sites are vanishing and waves of  e-books are washing traditionalists out to sea. They have a vision. Stories are the most powerful means to open up dialogue and inspire reverence for the American West. They hope the next Willa Cathers and David James Duncans will step forward. 

Kirsten says, “We want to forge a literary connection to the land.”

There will be no pulpit pounding here, no protests or placards. Torrey House Press aims to gain supporters on the sheer power of writing, on the strong backs of authors whose works evoke the West. 

The ambitious Torrey House plan has obstacles. Mark’s intense blue eyes focus just this side of tomorrow as he says, “I am the dog who caught the bus!” The bus he’s been chasing is his dream of new writers; the multiple fine manuscripts he’s received are the shiny bumper, in his teeth. 

So we at Torrey House Press are getting down and getting creative. Here in the desert. With the help of our good friends.

Watch for this Utah publisher to print six titles this year. Tell your friends to watch us, too. As the new Marketing Editor, I’m asking you to tell everyone you know about our upcoming nonfiction contest. We want the best work out there. See details below. The prizes are bodacious!

Torrey House Press, celebrating stories of the New West!

Creative Literary Nonfiction Contest

First prize $1,000; second prize $250; third prize $100
Deadline is Sept. 1, 2011

2,000 to 10,000 words

Show us the power of the Colorado Plateau and the American West
Entry fee $25

All winners published in Torrey House Press annual journal
 

Find out more at www.torreyhouse.com or follow us on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/TorreyHousePress.
 

Winners of the Torrey House Press Winter 2011 Fiction Contest will be announced on April 7, on our website. We’re already hungry to read the work in the Fall 2011 Creative Literary Nonfiction contest. Deadline coming up, folks.

Please tell your friends!

Wisdom from where I'd least expect it. Thoughts on being human by David Brooks.

Thanks, New York Times. May his insights spread like wildfire.

And the moving speech by the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, to his captors and his wife during his trial for subversion in China, in 2009. He lives in prison.

"I have no enemies and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies. Although there is no way I can accept your monitoring, arrests, indictments, and verdicts, I respect your professions and your integrity...

"Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress towards freedom and democracy. That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation's development and social change, to counter the regime's hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love.

"It is precisely because of such convictions and personal experience that I firmly believe that China's political progress will not stop, and I, filled with optimism, look forward to the advent of a future free China. For there is no force that can put an end to the human quest for freedom, and China will in the end become a nation ruled by law, where human rights reign supreme. I also hope that this sort of progress can be reflected in this trial as I await the impartial ruling of the collegial bench - a ruling that will withstand the test of history.

"If I may be permitted to say so, the most fortunate experience of these past twenty years has been the selfless love I have received from my wife, Liu Xia. She could not be present as an observer in court today, but I still want to say to you, my dear, that I firmly believe your love for me will remain the same as it has always been. Throughout all these years that I have lived without freedom, our love was full of bitterness imposed by outside circumstances, but as I savour its aftertaste, it remains boundless. I am serving my sentence in a tangible prison, while you wait in the intangible prison of the heart. Your love is the sunlight that leaps over high walls and penetrates the iron bars of my prison window, stroking every inch of my skin, warming every cell of my body, allowing me to always keep peace, openness, and brightness in my heart, and filling every minute of my time in prison with meaning. My love for you, on the other hand, is so full of remorse and regret that it at times makes me stagger under its weight. I am an insensate stone in the wilderness, whipped by fierce wind and torrential rain, so cold that no one dares touch me. But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you..."

Passionate pleas by two very different men to claim and further human love.

Thanks to Reuters and my friend Diana for excerpts of the Xiaobo speech.

I haven’t been able to figure out the narrative voice of a historical novel I’m writing for oh, fourteen years now. Well, the narrator is spot on for the first hundred pages, when the protagonist is in Utah, her home. But when my heroine travels to Reconstruction Dixie and yellow fever, poverty and drudgery accost her, the narrative thread gets lost. I wrote scene after scene, good scenes, but could not find the connectors.

To be honest, I do not like didactic writing, and feared that narration would open the gates of bombast. So I avoided narrating. But a series of scenes does not make a good novel. A series of scenes leaves the reader as befuddled as the writer. What, they both ask, is the point?

Today, with a head cold, while I was sitting in a very sunny window meditating, my heroine spoke to me. So simply. And I knew that was it, the way out, the way in. First person narrative is not omniscient, not shooting bolts of wonder from on high.

First person narration comes from a being stuck in time and place, wondering.

I spent several hours speaking as Clair.

Can I call something so obvious a breakthrough? Oh, once in a Shakespeare class my flamboyant and feverishly attractive professor pounded on Hamlet’s indecisiveness from every angle, leaving the class deadened with over-analysis, until I said, “Hamlet couldn’t decide!” And afterwards, in his office he said, “Richardson, can you believe that dope who it took all class to figure out Hamlet couldn’t decide?!” I remember being slain with humiliation. Now it seems great. I cared enough to get it. I followed Hamlet and Shakespeare and Professor Handsomeboots down the rabbit hole. I wasn’t taking his word for it. Words are only words.

And I care enough, however many years it takes, to get the narration right in my novel. Think I’m on the trail at last. You don’t have to be a shining intellect to penetrate the mysteries of literature. It helps, being honest, and listening with your quiet heart.

There’s the genuine mystery: making words surpass words.

Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain... only straw.
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don't know... But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking... don't they?
Dorothy: Yes, I guess you're right.

Wizard of Oz quote
Lions and Tigers and Bears karaoke (no words!)
Movie photo courtesy of this blog
Dorothy photo courtesy of this blog