Little Century
Anna Keesey, 2012
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374192044
Summary
In the tradition of such classics as My Antonia and There Will Be Blood, Anna Keesey’s Little Century is a resonant and moving debut novel by a writer of confident gifts.
Orphaned after the death of her mother, eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she’s met by her distant cousin, a laconic cattle rancher named Ferris Pickett. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin by a small lake called Half-a-Mind, and there she begins her new life as a homesteader. If she can hold out for five years, the land will join Pick’s already impressive spread.
But Esther discovers that this town on the edge of civilization is in the midst of a range war. There’s plenty of land, but somehow it is not enough for the ranchers—it’s cattle against sheep, with water at a premium. In this charged climate, small incidents of violence swiftly escalate, and Esther finds her sympathies divided between her cousin and a sheepherder named Ben Cruff, a sworn enemy of the cattle ranchers. As her feelings for Ben and for her land grow, she begins to see she can’t be loyal to both.
Little Century maps our country’s cutthroat legacy of dispossession and greed, even as it celebrates the ecstatic visions of what America could become. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Anna Keesey is a graduate of Stanford University and of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and has held residencies at MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Yaddo, and Provincetown. Keesey teaches English and creative writing at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
There are staples we've come to expect in the American frontier novel.... Mishandled, these western standbys can seem like threadbare, dime-novel cliches. Handled deftly, these conventions are the stuff of American myth.... While Anna Keesey's first novel...may walk a well-worn path, the familiar is rendered vividly through fluid and restrained prose, solid plotting and a keen eye for detail…. Keesey…treads this familiar territory competently, imbuing her characters with palpable motives, rich contradictions and fully realized pasts. She also stays atop the rising action of the story, upping the stakes for her characters and the town of Century as she herds us efficiently toward the conclusion. At the same time, she knows not to hurry readers along without letting them soak up the atmosphere.
Jonathan Evison - New York Times Book Review
Keesey's writing is so accomplished and easy-seeming.... Her words are clear as lake water…. "Tender" is a word Keesey uses again and again to describe her characters. She mothers them, cares about them like children, wants to protect them from the hell they have been so intent upon making. She persuades the reader to cherish them, as well.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
[A] briskly romantic, nontraditional Western.... It’s Willa Cather with a sense of humor... Keesey portrays her men and women as deeply flawed but so achingly vulnerable that it is impossible not to identify with them.
O, The Oprah Magazine
There’s not a single sentence in this novel that reads like it took hard work. The characters, sprung from another time, living in a place as removed as another planet, come to life on the page, and all their flaws feel as consistent and true as the flaws of our dearest loved ones in this work of near perfection.
Elizabeth Word Gutting - The Rumpus
Confidently energetic.... While Keesey offers a variety of characters with intriguing stories of their own, it is the richly depicted setting—from desert to dry good store—that showcases her talent.
Publishers Weekly
In the year 1900, at age 18, newly orphaned Esther Chambers leaves Chicago for the high desert of Oregon. Her distant cousin, a cattle rancher named Pick, steers her into claiming a homestead adjoining his land. He assures her that eventually he will buy it from her. At first Esther feels lonely and alienated, but once she gets to know her cousin and their neighbors in the small town of Century, she feels more at home. She learns to ride a horse and takes up typewriting and typesetting. Although Esther tries to stay out if it, she is swept up in escalating tensions between the cattle ranchers and sheep farmers. With an eye toward marriage, Pick begins to appreciate Esther's amicable intelligence. But Esther has started to care for one of the young sheep farmers. Then a murder turns the town inside out. Verdict: How Esther perseveres and finds her place among the buckaroos and an assortment of oddball settlers makes for highly entertaining reading. First novelist Keesey has produced a top-notch novel of Western Americana.—Keddy Ann Outlaw, formerly with Harris Cty. P.L., Houston, TX
Library Journal
The title refers to a little town in the midst of the vastness of Oregon, where at the turn of the 20th century, sheepmen and cattlemen vie for grazing territory as well as for the love of 18-year-old Esther Chambers. Recently orphaned, Esther travels from Chicago in search of Ferris "Pick" Pickett, a distant relative about 10 years older than she is. Pick is friendly but taciturn, and he takes her out to Half-a-Mind, a property that had recently been abandoned by a farmer.... Esther quickly discovers that much of the conflict out West lies in the hatred between cattlemen and sheepmen, for they're constantly fighting about who has the rights to free rangeland.... Amidst this growing violence Esther finds herself attracted to Pick, cautious spokesperson for the cattlemen, and Ben Cruff, a sheepman who almost by definition is hostile to the cattle ranchers.... Keesey writes lyrically and examines the ferocity of frontier life with an unromantic and penetrating gaze.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the setting of frontier Oregon as if it were a character: Is it seductive, comforting, dangerous? How does Esther’s perception of it change throughout the novel?
2. What did Esther’s mother teach her about survival? How did being raised by a woman affect Esther’s sense of self?
3. When Pick takes Esther to Mr. Grist so that she can claim the homestead near Half-a-Mind, what do his actions say about the history of America’s expansion in the Pacific Northwest, and about humanity’s approach to natural resources such as water?
4. What motivates Pick to be a rancher? Is he in it for the power or is he simply attached to the land? What separates him from the buckaroos? How is his relationship to the land different from Esther’s or Ben’s?
5. How is Esther shaped by her talent as a woman of words: a diary writer, typist, typesetter, court reporter, journalist?
6. What gives Jane and Violet authority in their community? What did Jane’s secret past predict about her future? Ultimately, were her actions heroic or shameful?
7. Would you have chosen Pick or Ben? Discuss the differences between rancher and shepherd as they play out in Little Century.
8. How is the story line affected by the major events of the time period, especially the railroad expansion and America’s intervention in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War? How do these events reflect the greed that spurs Century’s range war?
9. How do Esther’s memories of Chicago compare with her life on the frontier? What freedoms and constraints does she experience in each place?
10. Is Delores’s ancestry the sole reason Pick rejects her and Marguerite? How does Esther help him understand his place in Delores and Marguerite’s world?
11. The novel’s animals—sheep, horses, and cats in particular—play important roles. How do their needs and instincts compare with those of humans?
12. Why is Esther concerned enough—even more so than the coroner—to uncover the truth about Joe’s death?
13. The author writes of the “net of cousins” comprising all creatures, in which friend and foe, hunter and hunted, are ultimately related. What prevents humanity from functioning as a generous, vast family?
14. Discuss the closing images of Esther: What were her greatest sources of fulfillment in life?
(Questions issued by publisher.)