Ron McFarland

Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Steptoe's escape from encirclement by 1,000 Northern Plateau Indians in 1858 is a familiar story from the Indian Wars. Yet the details of the Battle of Pine Creek (or Tohotonimme) and its aftermath remain subjects of debate. Outnumbered six to one, Steptoe's 164 troops slipped away in the night. Newspapers called it a "disaster." A few weeks later, Colonel George Wright avenged the defeat and Steptoe, who had suffered a stroke months before the battle, lived his final years in relative obscurity in his native Virginia as the Civil War erupted. This definitive biography of Steptoe chronicles the career of a field officer who served nearly four years in the Second Seminole War, won commendation for gallantry during the Mexican War, performed admirably (though controversially) in the Utah Territory, undertook construction of forts at Walla Walla in the newly defined Washington Territory and engaged with various tribes throughout his deployments. His personal letters reveal a thoughtful, sensitive commander who came to question his choice of career even before his final battle.

The teacher assigns her fourth-grade students to write "poems as lovely as trees," and they go at it, these students whose aspirations are a display board at the county fair. Young Ron McFarland takes the subject to heart, and from his pencil unfurl leaves, sturdy branches, sunlight between the branches, possibly fruit and a wayward kite, and most certainly a nest in which birds burst with song. McFarland, in this and previous collections, goes far beyond trees. I see McFarland coloring the world, a sort of John Constable, beginning with trees and then with tenderness and art making it all come alive.- Gary Soto, author of New and Selected Poems, a National Book Award Finalist, and One Kind of FaithIf you were to sit down with Ron McFarland (kitchen counter, seminar table, barstool), you would soon understand that he knows a very great deal about a whole lot of things and can talk about any of them with savvy and erudition, mostly disguised as plain talk. The experience is not a whole lot different from reading A Variable Sense of Things, his latest book of poems. Sometimes wry, sometimes downright funny; sometimes elegiac, sad, or rueful, and always, always smart. They do not strain, these poems. They are wise. They mean exactly what they say, and more.- Robert Wrigley, author of Earthly Meditations: New and Selected Poems and The True Account of Myself As A BirdIntensely personal poems, studded with unexpected ironies like grace notes, which illuminate the depth below the surface.- Mary Clearman Blew, author of Think of Horses

In a 1995 interview, prolific Chicano writer Gary Soto noted, "Wonderment has always been a part of my life." This book surveys Soto's immense range of poems, stories, novels, essays and plays for audiences of prereaders to adults. Soto's world moves from the cotton and beet fields of the San Joaquin Valley to the blue-collar barrios of Fresno, and to urban and suburban settings in Oakland and Berkeley. Chapters analyze a wide variety of Soto titles, from his breakout works like 1977's The Elements of San Joaquin to the Chato the Cat illustrated books for children. With self-deprecating humor, particularly in his poems, Soto combines his wonderment with the trials and conflicts that beset him throughout life. In such novels as Jesse, Buried Onions and The Afterlife, and in his stories for YA readers, including Baseball in April and Petty Crimes, his broad array of characters confront the anxieties and annoyances of adolescence. Although he continues to motivate young Chicanos to read and write, Soto stakes his greatest claims to literary prominence through his poems, which are accessible to readers of all ages.

In more than 30 novels, several short stories, graphic novels, movies, plays and poems, Ernest Hemingway has been introduced or "appropriated" as an important fictional character. This book is an inquiry into that phenomenon from various perspectives--including that of fan fiction--and deals with such questions as what, if anything, this biographical fiction adds to the dialogue about America's best known and most talked about writer.

"Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy."Generations of readers have now accepted the call of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to join his heroine Evangeline in her search for Gabriel, the lover she was separated from during the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. This critical history of the book-length poem describes its reception in the weeks and months that followed the 1847 release, explains its continued popularity down through the years, and offers insights on its interpretation and relevance today.

The autobiography has not always been acknowledged as true literature. Since 1970, however, American memoirs have revealed themselves as a respectable literary genre, distinct with an inimitable literary voice and a unique capacity to intersect narration and reflection. This study focuses critical attention on ten memoirs from the northern U.S. Rockies, including Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. By comparing memoirs representing states that share similar demographic, ecological, and socio-economic characteristics, this historic and literary analysis reveals both commonalities and divergences among American Western memoirs. Each chapter compares two books of similar thematic concerns, ranging from regional values and rural evolution to dynamic landscapes and the experiences of American Indians.