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Title: Little Century
Author: Anna Keesey
Narrator: Tavia Gilbert
Format: Unabridged
Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
Language: English
Release date: 06-05-12
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 9 votes
Genres: Fiction, Historical
Publisher's Summary:
Little Century is a charged and eloquentnovel about a young woman caught in the midst of the range wars in the American West at the turn of the century.
Orphaned after the death of her mother, 18-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, shes met by a sunburnt, laconic cattle wrangler: her distant cousin, FerrisPickett. Within days, Esther is perjuring herself at the county clerks office, swearing that she is21 and ready for the rigors of homesteading. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin that shows daylight at the chinks, and Esther begins her new life on the small lake called Half-a-Mind. If she can hold out for five years, the land will join Picks already impressive spread.
Land - theres a lot of it wide-open in Century but, somehow, not enough. Esther has arrived in the middle of a range war; its cattle against sheep, and waters at a premium. Small incidents of violence swiftly escalate; before long, blood spills on the dry ground, and the railroad starts to think twice about laying tracks through Century. No railroad means no town, something Pick and his men will go to any lengths to prevent.
Meanwhile, Esther finds her sympathies divided between her cousin and a sheepherder named Ben Cruff, a sworn enemy of the cattle ranchers. As her passion for Ben and her land grows, she begins to see how at odds these things are with her cousins own interests. She cant be loyal to both; at some point shell have to make a terrible choice.
Little Centurymaps our countrys cutthroat legacy of dispossession and greed; it also celebrates the ecstatic visions of what America could become. Through Esthers story, which veers between triumph and heartbreak, we see the American West as it was being forged. In the tradition of classics likeMy ÁntoniaandThere Will Be Blood,Little Centuryis a resonant and moving debut novel by a gifted writer.
Anna Keesey is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and teaches English and creative writing at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.
Critic Reviews:
In this novel of stunning beauty, Anna Keesey gives us the American West at the turn of the century and a cast of unforgettable characters who will risk anything to tame it. Oregons hardscrabble frontier comes utterly alive for us, and in prose so lovely, spot-on, and accomplished, I found myself dog-earing nearly every page. An incredible debut - and a writer to watch. (Paula McLain,New York Timesbest-selling author ofThe Paris Wife)
Here is a fine novel, written with grace, about the settling of Oregon and the evening redness in the West.In the desert town of Century, haunted by Indian blood and barren to the core, the cattlemen hate the shepherds and the shepherds hate the cattlemen. But as the community is about to consume itself with greed and vengeance, a young orphan from Chicago shows up with a moral clarity that outstrips her age, to remind us that character matters and that justice is pursuant to conscience.Little Centuryis a frontier saga, a love story, and an epic of many small pleasures.
