Product Description

One woman’s tough, spirited life in the deserts and lonely ranges of the twentieth-century West

Novelist William Haywood Henderson has won acclaim for his precisely rendered and achingly beautiful evocations of land and nature and his ability to bring to vivid life the contemporary West of ranch hands and drifters. Of his most recent novel, The Rest of the Earth, Annie Proulx remarked that "Henderson writes some of the most evocative and transcendently beautiful prose in contemporary American literature."

Set primarily in Wyoming, Henderson’s new novel is the chronicle of six generations of a family, viewed through the lens of one woman’s very long life. Augusta "Gussie" Locke is born in Minnesota in 1903. As a teenager she moves west with her mother to Colorado and then runs away from home. A one-night stand with a traveling soldier leaves her pregnant, and with her daughter, Anne, she eventually finds a life in Wyoming running supplies to oil and mineral crews in the Great Basin Divide. Through the years, Gussie keeps moving, abandoning people and places, being abandoned herself; Anne runs away just as her mother had, never to be seen again. Settling in the Wind River Range, Augusta, alone again, builds a new life until, years later, her grandson and great-granddaughter seek to discover the woman behind the family myth. Spanning the twentieth century, Augusta’s extraordinary trials and tribulations play out themes of love and loss, redemption and reconciliation. Redolent with myth, humor, strange landscapes, and stark reality, Augusta Locke is an indelible portrait of a woman who through great spirit and toughness of character blazes her own trail.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1432531 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Against the enormous beauty of the American Midwest depicted in Henderson's third novel, people cast small but significant shadows while tending to families as fragile as fallen leaves. The hero of this century-spanning epic is a tough, restless woman, Augusta "Gussie" Locke. Born in 1903 in rural Minnesota to the beautiful Leota and the coarse, handsome trapper Brud Tornig, Gussie proves a disappointing curiosity to her parents: homely, solitary and given to running away. When Gussie catches her father with another woman, she and Leota flee the state, landing in Greeley, Colo., where Leota marries the wealthy Mr. Locke. On her first day as a Locke, the teenage Gussie once again runs off, escaping civilized life to the mountains of Wyoming. There, she finds work with the oil and mineral crews in the Great Divide Basin and cares for her daughter, Anne, conceived on the run from Greeley. Anne's own trajectory echoes Gussie's, and before long Gussie must face her mother's fate: abandoned by her only child. Saturated with details of the natural Midwest, Henderson's work etches in high relief the image of a solitary life among scenic riches. There is, however, an emotional wall around Henderson's protagonist, inviolable even by such studied prose; as a result, some characters remain elusive, like a beautiful, sun-faded portrait. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Henderson's novel is an extraordinarily beautiful creation, brought to the reader on the wings of the ravens that serve as its protagonist's familiars. Told in languorous prose virtually encrusted with the details of nature--very reminiscent of Annie Dillard--this story follows Gussie Locke through a lifetime of wandering. As soon as she can walk, Gussie is tracing the paths of her natural surroundings, following the flight of ravens through northern Minnesota, a few steps behind her father. As she grows, so does her preference for quiet, for the smells and sensations of the earth, and for a life away from the rules of polite society. Escaping her mother and new stepfather, she passes a passionate night that leaves her with child, and the rest of the novel follows the life she makes as a single mother in the first half of the twentieth century. The tender descriptions of Gussie's love for her child are especially touching, given her hardness elsewhere. Rarely is a woman portrayed in this way without reducing her to someone with some kind of gender confusion, but Henderson avoids these cliches. Gussie is truly her own kind of woman, and her own kind of mother. As much a story of lineage and the meaning of family as it is a story of nature, this novel covers a lot of ground in greater detail than one would imagine possible in some 400 pages. Read slowly, and enjoy this raw and haunting tale. Debi Lewis
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
An uncommonly beautiful, haunting book. The writing is like prose poetry, ethereal and earthy at the same time . . . Henderson has managed to create one of the most arresting female literary characters in quite some time. -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

Colorful and memorable . . . Henderson creates a world that is both epic and universal and, perhaps above all, eminently readable. -- Rocky Mountain News

Customer Reviews

Augusta Locke
Augusta Locke is one of the most compelling characters to emerge from the American West. The unbeautiful daughter of beautiful parents, a girl with a wandering habit who walks into Wyoming, she grows into a woman who reads the mind of the country around her -- the Wind River Range, the Great Divide Basin, the Big Sandy River, land where "the season can swing from heat to snow and back in the turn of a day." In Henderson's flat-out gorgeous prose, Gussie's life feels epic, not because the events that make it up are so big, but because we follow her so closely, watching her seasons change. She's a self-made orphan, a fierce mother, a lonely lover, a rough road worker, a woman in a man's world, sometimes a woman in a man's clothing. In the vast plains, such a small female figure might go unnoticed, her life leaving a shallow track like the roads "so barely scratched into the surface that a shift in the angle of the sun would erase them altogether," but Augusta Locke will live with you long after you finish the book and try to put her back on the shelf.

Incredible Book
Augusta "Gussie" Locke is one of the most facinating and fully drawn female literary characters in recent memory. Her defiant, independent spirit is both inspiring and deeply moving. Henderson paints vivid and palpable landscapes of the West with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read about the region. This book is not just for Westerners - although, I suspect that Westerners will particularly appreciate it. The book's great humanity, and staggering portrayal of the natural world, make it a must-read for everyone. I could not more highly recommend Augusta Locke.

Beautiful story of one woman's journey through the rugged west
Augusta Locke is as wild as the landscape she inhabits. Unable to sit still when her mother marries a man who'd like to tame her wandering ways, she escapes into the wild west. She lives as the men around her live, by ranching and working for the oil crews. Yet, in the midst of this rough life, she remains very much a woman. A one night stand early in her journey leaves her pregnant and she gives birth to a daughter who is destined to leave her, as well. Henderson's descriptions of the landscape, the hardscrabble existence and the people Augusta encounters on her journey, are among the most beautiful being penned today. The land itself becomes a character worth knowing in this beautifully wrought novel. Well worth the read.