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TWISTED
TREE
Publisher:
Harcourt Brace Format: Hardcover ACCOLADES
FOR TWISTED TREE * Indie Next List Notable list for November 2009 PRAISE
FOR TWISTED TREE “The novel is brimming with arresting descriptions, and the western setting is employed to surprising effect…. Meyers's small masterpiece deserves comparison to the work of Raymond Carver, Joy Williams and Peter Matthiessen.”
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"Though identified as a "novel" on the title page, this is more accurately a collection of loosely related short stories, all set in or near Twisted Tree in western South Dakota. The central event binding the stories is the murder of Hayley Jo Zimmerman by a serial killer who targets anorexics after befriending them online. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, not all of whom knew Hayley Jo personally, though all know of the event. Other "ghosts" haunt the characters' lives, whether memories of lost loved ones or painful echoes from the past. We're in dark territory here, with little humor to relieve the grim tone. But Meyers has great respect for the diversity of his characters' rich internal lives and experiences, though they might appear outwardly stoic and unemotional. VERDICT Recommended for readers of good literary fiction set in the American
West." "Twisted Tree is a piercing and original book, beautifully written and conceived. In it Kent Meyers has created a lyrical atlas, revealing all that lies beneath his indelible world of freeway towns and bison ranches--a haunted territory of regret, longing and guilt." Accolades
for the Work of Wolves Previous
Accolades
for Kent Meyers Prior Endorsements "The Work of Wolves is quietly, majestically elegiac.
As the Old West reaches a collision course with its own history,
four men?an old-fashioned cowboy, a German exchange student, and two
antithetical Lakota from the rez?must determine its future.
Love has many meanings in this landscape, and all are as
difficult as the land itself. From
the triangulation of cultures, a fourth is born?one in which justice
finds a new and surprising expression.
In Kent Meyers' deft hands, detail activates imagination; time
slows, then expands to create a lyric space in which motive is turned
and turned again on the lathe of insight."
"Written with simple, poetic dignity and a savvy for the land that can only come from
having been raised up in it with eyes wide open." “The Work
of Wolves" sometimes reads like the work of golden retrievers. It's
a little too big, a little too beautiful, and it jumps all over the
place, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Kent Meyers's new novel is
the kind of book that demands and rewards fierce loyalty….If Paula Cole is still wondering where all the cowboys
have gone, she should meet Carson Fielding, the sensitive, steady-eyed
hero of "The Work of Wolves."….Of course, skittish cynics
will bolt at the earnest quality of Meyers's story, but I instantly fell
under its spell and have been eager to find other people who will love
it ever since….It's just one of Meyers's many surprising moves that
he's written such a passionate love story with no love scenes. …It's
another daring move on Meyers's part to try to weave these disparate
characters together. And it's remarkable that he does it so beautifully.
…"The Work of Wolves" would rather reach for profundity than
play safely on the ground with irony…. it manages to convey some
stirring insight about the nature of families, the essence of duty, and
the sacred quality of land….It's also a really cool story. I feel
certain that somewhere in Hollywood, there's a young Clint Eastwood
waiting on tables who could be propelled into stardom by "The Work
of Wolves." The movie rights haven't been sold yet, and the finer
points of the novel probably wouldn't survive that translation anyway,
but even a typically glossy Hollywood version could bring this powerful
book the attention it deserves. That might be one more risk Meyers
should take.” "The novel's fine characterizations, crisp dialogue
and fully realized sense of place make [THE WORK OF WOLVES]
compelling." "A
deeply felt tale of family ties and reverence for the land, this work
should find a readership well beyond regional callections. Recommended
for most public libraries." "Meyers's
third novel is a gorgeously written, exacting exploration of duty and
retribution set in dusty rural South Dakota. There's no love lost
between horse trainer Carson Fielding and land baron Magnus Yarborough
ever since a confident 14-year-old Carson got the better of Magnus in a
horse buy. But Carson, now 26, is broke, and Magnus needs someone to
train his horses and teach his wife, Rebecca, to ride. Carson and
Rebecca fall for each other, and though their relationship remains in
the realm of perfectly rendered, unconsummated desire, Magnus becomes
convinced they're having an affair. In a bizarre act of revenge, he
hides and starves the horses Carson trained. When two teenagers, Lakota
math whiz Earl Walks Alone and German exchange student Willi Schubert,
discover the abused animals, they plot with Carson to save them;
alcoholic Ted Kills Many soon joins the mission. Meyers weaves the
folklore and legend of Lakota culture with the tension between ranchers
who have worked the land for generations and the greed of those who
would take it away from them. His spare dialogue is brilliantly and
often comically expressive, and Carson, his taciturn, rational hero, is
an original and compelling character. Strong themes of generational
responsibility and family history add resonance to this gratifying, very
American novel." "Meyers,
building on the emotional plentitude found in THE LIGHT IN THE CROSSING
(1999), sets in motion finely realized characters and explores our
complex attachements to place and family. ...Meyers, imaginative and
equally attuned to uniqueness and universality, awakens sorrow,
compassion, and wonder in this vivid, covertly metaphysical, and
viscerally dramatic novel of tragic cultural legacies, personal valor,
and boundary--dispelling revelations."
Past Reviews "Meyers,
who writes with biblical intensity, returns to the small Minnesota town
of Cloten, the setting of his novel The River Warren , in this
collection of interlocking stories. He portrays farm people who possess
an intimate understanding of death and the stoicism of those who
routinely face the unexpected: the obliteration of a blizzard, ruined
crops, a child's fatal accident. In the astonishing title story, two
bored young men play "Cornfield Roulette," racing in the dark
with their headlights off through the green tunnels late summer corn
builds over gravel roads. Violence is always in the offing, whether it's
the tough decision to shoot a beloved dog after it slaughters the
family's chickens, or the slow percolation of revenge in the fairy
tale-like "The Smell of the Deer." Attuned to the confusions
of young boys, the deep loneliness and poverty of rural life, and the
love of the land that makes it all bearable, Meyers renders midwest life
mythic in its tragedies and privations." A fine
debut collection of 12 stories, all set in rural Minnesota, by western
novelist Meyers (The River Warren, 1998). Meyers's selection of Cloten,
Minnesota, as the focal point of his narrative influences the texture as
well as the background of his tales: Cloten is little more than a
collection of adjoining farms, a flat expanse of midwestern geography
all but unknown to outsiders. Most of the lives it contains are as bleak
as the landscape, if Meyers is any guide: ``Two-Speed,'' for example, is
a funereal recollection of a mean-spirited old man who raised three
equally bad-natured sons to grow up to become the terror of the town.
``A Strange Brown Fruit'' describes a local farmboy's coming of age,
initiated by his contact with a wounded rabbit outside his parents'
house. ``Wind Rower,'' from the separate perspectives of his neighbor,
his mother, and a local fireman, portrays the freakish death of a farmer
in his thresher. ``Glacierland'' is a very moving (and aptly named)
account of a middle- aged farmer's attempt to come to terms with
mortality in the wake of his wife's death. ``Abiding by Law'' provides
an eerie diagram of Cloten's jagged connection to the outside world
through the misunderstandings that arise between local inhabitants and
German refugees whove settled in the area, and ``Bird Shadows'' offers a
highly elegiac account (``The pull of land is like a black, black tide,
a strong black moon over thick black water, water so thick one walks
upon it and carries it forever upon one's heels, water like a glue'') of
a boy who can't get away from the family farm however much he might want
to. The title story describes a rather macabre form of ``chicken''
played out on rural roads by a young man during the summer following his
father's death. A small gem: Gloomy to an extreme, but marvelously paced
and told with great restraint and practiced skill. [for THE RIVER
WARREN]
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