[.uk] Augusta Locke (ISBN 014303829X)

Augusta Locke:
Augusta Locke is one of the most compelling characters to emerge from the American West. The unbeautiful daughter of beautiful parents, a girl with a wandering habit who walks into Wyoming, she grows into a woman who reads the mind of the country around her -- the Wind River Range, the Great Divide Basin, the Big Sandy River, land where "the season can swing from heat to snow and back in the turn of a day." In Henderson's flat-out gorgeous prose, Gussie's life feels epic, not because the events that make it up are so big, but because we follow her so closely, watching her seasons change. She's a self-made orphan, a fierce mother, a lonely lover, a rough road worker, a woman in a man's world, sometimes a woman in a man's clothing. In the vast plains, such a small female figure might go unnoticed, her life leaving a shallow track like the roads "so barely scratched into the surface that a shift in the angle of the sun would erase them altogether," but Augusta Locke will live with you long after you finish the book and try to put her back on the shelf.

Incredible Book:
Augusta "Gussie" Locke is one of the most facinating and fully drawn female literary characters in recent memory. Her defiant, independent spirit is both inspiring and deeply moving. Henderson paints vivid and palpable landscapes of the West with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read about the region. This book is not just for Westerners - although, I suspect that Westerners will particularly appreciate it. The book's great humanity, and staggering portrayal of the natural world, make it a must-read for everyone. I could not more highly recommend Augusta Locke.

Augusta Locke:
Best damn book I've read all year. Tough as fence post, bites like barbed-wire. Damned if Augusta Locke ain't real. How does Henderson do it? --the characters and setting, the images and story. There's more style and substance on one of William Heywood Henderson's pages than between all of he covers on the New Release table at Barnes and Nobel put together. "At night, when the weather allowed, Gussie and Mr. Foster laid out a tarpaulin on the ground, their bedrolls padding their bones, the sleeping box as breakwind, Anne (Gussie's child) had outgrown the box, and now she carefully laid out her own blankets, tugging at the corners to square and smooth the fabric. Beneath the stars, they all lay side by side, Anne in the middle. The stars filled the entire basin, no forests to catch the constellations, only famished cottonwoods. Gussie looked directly up into the night. The earth turned. The stars surrendered their positions. Get this book new, you won't find many second-hand copies. It's the kind of novel people keep to read over and over again.

You'll never forget Gussie:
This is a fictional chronicle of six generations of a western family. The west is always one of my favorite subjects. Gussie is a rare woman, both strong and tender. She is a character you will never forget. This raw and haunting tale is my pick for best book for the first half of 2006.

Henderson Portrays Startling People, Stunning Landscape:
The experience of reading Augusta Locke was for me a luxurious one. I was immediately drawn into the story by the specificity and quirkiness of the detail and the determination and feistiness of the main character. Henderson, a master of Western imagery, draws a complicated picture, more like a series of fast-moving, high-resolution close-ups placed against an expansive backdrop of the enormous world. Tiny, fragile people move within its tempests, striking out on their own, struggling to make it their own. Gussie is a puzzle--a delightful confusion of human frailties and virtues--courage and heartache and wit and longing. And in the vastness of the Wind River Valley, against the constraints of time and coincidence, she finds Walker Avary, a priceless and beloved character from Henderson's earlier novel, The Rest of the Earth. What a great sense of satisfaction to have the two of them meet and connect and travel together through the lonesome paths they've taken in life. For me, this was a book that needed reading twice, the first time to get lost in it, and the second to savor it.