The Willow Field - Rilegato

"Hoist yourself into the saddle and ride along for this terse tumbleweed of a novel and you'll know what to make of the phrase writing the West . . . [Its] elements call for distilled storytelling, of which Kittredge proves master."
--John Balzar, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[In his] beautifully composed novel about a cowboy of Basque origin who grows up in the 20th century in his home state of Montana, William Kittredge, one of the American West's most respected fiction writers and essayists, put us on notice that [he] has become a worthy successor to A. B. Guthrie and 'The Great Montana Novel.'"
--Alan Cheuse, San Francisco Chronicle

"This much is true: William Kittredge has remastered the Western saga, creating in The Willow Field a story with such classic scenes and characters that it nearly conjures déjà vu. It doesn't quite, because Kittredge's characters are fresh and new while remaining faithful to the era of the mid-20th century West."
--Skye K. Moody, Seattle Times

"So seductive you'll want to strap on spurs and light out for the territory. The Willow Field spans most of the 20th century and describes a way of life that hung on for decades after the country slipped into the effete and poisonous modern age . . . A showcase for the startling beauty of Kittredge's prose and his knowledge of the West . . . sensitively and intricately drawn. "
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World

"Love, sorrow, frustration, the compromises that men and women make to live together, horses, politics, friendship, the look and feel of the West between 1933 and 1991--it's all here. Kittredge uses strong, earthy language to tell the story . . . laying his meanings between the lines like a modern Ernest Hemingway . . "
--Library Journal

"Luminous . . . An exploration of the magnetic fields that draw people together and push them apart . . . Kittredge knows that deal, and he gets it exactly right."
--Bill Ott, Booklist, starred review

“The Willow Field is a big, wild-hearted American saga. An instant classic.”
–Gretel Ehrlich

“Superlatives can be annoying, but when a man so many of us love steps up to the plate in his mid-seventies and parks it, what can we do but throw our hats at the sky? The Willow Field is the shit. Historically and geographically sweeping; soaringly lyrical yet so tuned to the terse wisdom of its horseman hero it sends chills all the way down to your saddle and into and on out the horse. William Kittredge is the bard laureate of the American West, and this novel will be bringing people joy thousands of days from today.”
—David James Duncan

"With a compelling confidence . . . Kittredge balances earthy dialogue with lyrical prose to create a memorable evocation of the American west."
--Publishers Weekly

"The Willow Field is a Western in the richest sense of that word. There is a taproot here, and something elemental about the American West comes pushing through the prose itself. I read it as a love song too, part lament, part passionate embrace, by a writer obsessed with a complex terrain he knows from the bottom up, from the inside out. I salute Bill Kittredge for what he has given us in this abundant and heartful book." --James D. Houston

“As much as this powerful novel is infatuated with the American West--its grave succession that ends in modernity, its land and animals as viewed by humans, its conflicts and trials, its quiet--it is also a novel in love with language itself, as stargazers are in love with light. Kittredge's novel is ample and satisfying and luminous. It's surely the book he was most meant to write.”
--Richard Ford

William Kittredge is the author, most recently, of The Nature of Generosity, and with Annick Smith he edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. He grew up in Oregon and now lives in Missoula, where for many years he taught at the University of Montana.