The Willow Field

Rossie Benasco’s horseback existence begins at age 15 and culminates in a thousand-mile drive of more than 200 head of horses through the Rockies into Calgary. It’s a journey that leads him, ultimately, to Eliza Stevenson and a passion so powerful, his previously unfocused life gains clarity and purpose. From the settlers, cowboys, and gamblers who opened up this country to the landholders and politicians who ran it, this is an epic tale of love and wide open spaces that stretches over the grand canvas of the twentieth-century West.

After numerous essays, short stories and the heralded memoir A Hole in the Sky, William Kittredge gives us a debut novel that ratifies his standing as a leading writer of the American West.

Rossie Benasco’s horseback existence begins at age 15 and culminates in a thousand-mile drive of more than 200 head of horses through the Rockies into Calgary. It’s a journey that leads him, ultimately, to Eliza Stevenson and a passion so powerful, his previously unfocused life gains clarity and purpose. From the settlers, cowboys, and gamblers who opened up this country to the landholders and politicians who ran it, this is an epic tale of love and wide open spaces that stretches over the grand canvas of the twentieth-century West.

The Washington Post - Ron Charles

The opening chapters of William Kittredge's new Western are 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 rest of the country slipped into the effete and poisonous modern age. But the most surprising thing about Kittredge's novel is that it's his first. After dozens of essays and short stories and his memoir, Hole in the Sky , it's easy to imagine that you must have read a novel by this 74-year-old writer before. In fact, he and Steven M. Krauzer, a colleague at the University of Montana, wrote nine Westerns under the pseudonym "Owen Rountree" in the 1980s, but this time he's riding solo under his own name and calling the outing his debut.

William Kittredge is the author of Hole in the Sky, a memoir; two collections of essays, The Nature of Generosity and Owning It All; and two collections of stories, The Van Gogh Fields and We Are Not in This Together. With Annick Smith, he edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. A co-producer of the movie A River Runs Through It, he grew up on his family ranch in Oregon, studied at Oregon State University and the University of Iowa, and was Regents Professor at the University of Montana for decades. He lives in Montana but travels widely.