Lime Creek
Fiction
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
In this wonderful work of fiction, Joe Henry explores the complex relationship between a father and his sons, whose deep connections to one another, to the land, and to the creatures that inhabit it give meaning to their lives.
Spencer Davis, his wife, Elizabeth, and their sons, Luke, Whitney, and Lonny, work with horses and with their hands. They spend long relentless days cutting summer hay and feeding it to their cattle through fierce Wyoming winters. The family bears witness to the cycle of life, bringing foals into the world and deciding when to let a favored mare pass on to the next. As Luke grows older, falls in love, and begins to assert his independence, Spencer strives to impart the wisdom of this way of life to his headstrong son, whatever the cost.
Moving, powerful, and beautifully rendered, Lime Creek brings readers into the lives of this unforgettable family and into a world that, though often harsh, is lit by flashes of spectacular grace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Songwriter and ex-rancher Henry's slight and earthy debut, a short volume of eight connected stories of the high plains, begins with Spencer Davis, "an interloper in a cowboy hat," who marries Elizabeth Putnam of Cambridge, Mass., and spirits her off to a Wyoming ranch to birth foals, put up the hay, and have kids Lonny, Luke, and Whitney. In subsequent sketches, Spencer discusses his physical and psychological WWII scars with his three awed sons; Luke has to put down his old mare; and Whitney and Luke star on the high school gridiron. The Davis men prove to be resilient, tough, and stubborn, and also prone to bouts of lyrical fancy such as with Spencer's thoughts of Elizabeth as an "inland sea washing up and falling back and washing up again with the muffled tide-like stroke of her own intimate pulse." It's brooding and deadly serious in the way that fiction of the rustic West often is, but maybe too much so, as the reader is all too aware of what Henry strains for, but doesn't reach: the lean, mournful power of Annie Proulx.
