Book: Lime Creek by Joe Henry

This is a gem, a lovely little novel set in Wyoming in the mid 20th century. The prose is evocative, lyrical, rich, spare.

It a story of a family working a cattle ranch on the high plains with mountains on the horizons and the huge over-arching sky. They are Spencer, Elizabeth and their three sons. The author chooses seemingly random events in these lives and writes mostly of the two younger boys, and each chapter is of a piece and seems exactly right and satisfying: Luke and Whitney throwing tomatoes at clean sheets on the clothesline; a football game in far-off town requiring a long bus ride; the harsh, deeply cold winters and the consequences of complaining; the birth of a foal at the wrong time of year; the strength and tenderness of love.

"Ever since that day two years ago when he sent off by himself and somehow ended up over in Whiskey Basin which was a long ways away and then showed up at dawn the next morning with a busted hand and broken ribs but still trailing four cows and calves in front of his mare. Whitney always calls him "Whiskey" whenever just plain ol' Luke won't do."

"There were summer evenings I remember coming up from the barn after the long day's haying, Spencer says. And seeing Elizabeth through the trees before she could see me. Her apron still about her waist, sitting on the porch steps, and with the warm wind blowing through that beautiful straw-colored hair of hers as she watched the sky already darkening in the east with that faraway look on her face."

The author has received a National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation "for the celebration of the natural world in his work."