Explore Booksellers’ picks range from Native voices to nature narratives

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Explore Booksellers in Aspen recommends NAMES OF BOOKS HERE.

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From the publisher: A wondrous and shattering award-winning novel that follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize.

Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind. Dene Oxendene, pulling his life together after his uncle’s death and working at the powwow to honor his memory. Fourteen-year-old Orvil, coming to perform traditional dance for the very first time. They converge and collide on one fateful day at the Big Oakland Powwow and together this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.

From Katrina Nelson, staff: With all the excitement surrounding “Wandering Stars,” it’s worth returning to the brilliance of Tommy Orange’s debut, “There There,” a novel that deepens with each read. I find Orange’s style sharp and unflinching—able to draw laughter even as it exposes unhealed wounds, refusing to simplify or soothe the truths it tells. “There, There” does something powerful by having us, as readers, trace his web of characters and shifting connections with an earnestness that mirrors each his Native characters’ own quests to find kin and meaning; to read this is to be in intimate proximity with the cry of a people’s emotional, political, and physical search for home without denying the heart-breaking hollowness that descends upon any real reckoning with the Indigenous experience and settler colonialism. Read it in one sitting because every character, no matter the choices they make, touched my heart.

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From the publisher: A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass on New Zealand’s South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike and leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, an undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. For years, the group has struggled to break even. To occupy the farm at Thorndike would mean a shot at solvency at last.

But the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine also has an interest in the place: he has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker, or so he tells Birnam’s founder, Mira, when he catches her on the property. He’s intrigued by Mira, and by Birnam Wood; although they’re poles apart politically, it seems Lemoine and the group might have enemies in common. But can Birnam trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust one another?

From Jenny Douglass, staff: A well-crafted, fast-paced, dark novel that reads differently than your typical thriller genre. Based in New Zealand, you’ve got a bunch of activist gardeners who encounter a rich tech billionaire from America (trying not to give spoilers here). I loved the way this author brought to life the interpersonal issues that can come up, whether it’s within a group of radical left-wing activists, or how we all relate to people with money and power. The broader theme here is about how we all see the world around us and work to bring the change we want to see in different, very human, fallible ways. I couldn’t put this book down.

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From the publisher: The classic novel of fly fishing and spirituality was republished with a new Afterword by the author. Since its publication in 1983, “The River Why” has become a classic. David James Duncan’s sweeping novel is a coming-of-age comedy about love, nature, and the quest for self-discovery, written in a voice as distinct and powerful as any in American letters.

Gus Orviston is a young fly fisherman who leaves behind his comically schizoid family to find his own path. Taking refuge in a remote cabin, he sets out in pursuit of the Pacific Northwest’s elusive steelhead. But what begins as a physical quarry becomes a spiritual one as his quest for self-knowledge batters him with unforeseeable experiences.

Profoundly reflective about our connection to nature and to one another, “The River Why” is also a comedic rollercoaster. Like Gus, the reader emerges utterly changed, stripped bare by the journey Duncan so expertly navigates.

From Amy Floyd, staff: Every year, as spring gives way to summer, I pull out my well-worn copy of David James Duncan’s cult classic to help get me into the summer spirit. It’s a beautifully quirky story of a young fishing prodigy and his search for meaning in the wilderness. Duncan’s writing never ceases to delight me and I love immersing myself in the unique world he’s created.  A must-read for anyone who loves fishing, water, and spending time in nature – or just funny, sweet, coming-of-age stories. Although it’s been over 40 years since its first release, “The River Why” never gets old.

Type of Story: Review

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