Broken Country: Mountains and Memory

C.L. Rawlins previous book, Sky's Witness, was praised by Jim Harrison for the "spaciousness of its thought and the antic wit of its style." Broken Country takes us back to the source: Wyoming's remote Salt River Range, where the author's life changed for good in the summer of 1973. Thus-with a rift between himself and his family, his heritage, and a nation at war-Rawlins begins a journey to the American interior. He takes to the high country with a team of horses, three dogs, and a friend named Mitchell Black to watch over a herd of sheep. And there he encounters not only a rugged landscape but his own mythic legacy: the frontier West. "To be found," he writes, "you must be lost or lose to be whole, you must know that you are, or can be, or will be, broken." Here is fresh air, ferocious mirth and a hint of silent terror as Rawlins tackles the questions we long to ask of ourselves and our tangled world. As our reach entends to the vastness of the land, it also deepens to touch the mysteries of the heart. In Broken Country we find both storm and shelter as the author guides us to the place of understanding.