three novels, two memoirs
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~VOGUE HIT LIST: 6 SUMMER NOVELS~
~CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: 15 SUMMER NOVELS~
~REAL SIMPLE: 7 ADDICTIVE SUMMER NOVELS~
1967. Gin Mitchell knows a better life awaits her when she marries hometown hero Mason McPhee. Raised in a two-room shack by her Oklahoma grandfather, a strict Methodist minister, Gin had never believed that someone like Mason, a handsome college boy, the pride of Shawnee, would look her way. But nothing can prepare her for the world she and Mason step into when he takes a job with the Arabian American Oil company in Saudi Arabia. In the gated compound of Abqaiq, Gin and Mason are given a home with marble floors, a houseboy to cook their meals, a gardener to tend the sandy patch out back—even among the veiled women and strict laws of shariah, Gin’s life has become the stuff of fairy tales. She buys her first swimsuit, she pierces her ears, and Mason gives her a glittering diamond ring. But when a young Bedouin woman is found dead, washed up on the shores of the Persian Gulf, Gin’s world closes in around her, and the one person she trusts is nowhere to be found.
Set against the gorgeously etched landscape of a country on the cusp of enormous change, In the Kingdom of Men abounds with sandstorms and locust swarms, shrimp peddlers, pearl divers, and Bedouin caravans– a luminous portrait of life in the desert. Award-winning author Kim Barnes weaves a mesmerizing, richly imagined tale of Americans out of their depths in Saudi Arabia, a marriage in peril, and one woman’s quest for the truth, no matter what it might cost her.
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A Country Called Home is a powerful novel of young love and rural isolation from the acclaimed author of In the Wilderness. Thomas Deracotte is just out of medical school, and he and his pregnant wife, Helen, have their whole future mapped out for them in upper-crust Connecticut. But they are dreamers, and they set out to create their own farm in rural Idaho instead. The fields are in ruins when they arrive, so they hire a young farmhand named Manny to help rebuild. But the sudden, frightening birth of their daughter, Elise, tests the young couple, and Manny is called upon to mend this fractured family--a healing that Thomas Deracotte finds himself unable to perform. What the years bring is not back-to-the-land contentment but a growing desire in each of the characters for something else, something more. An extraordinary story of wide-eyed idealism, lost hope, and hard-won redemption, A Country Called Home is a testament to the power of family—the family we are born to and the family we create.
A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
An Oregonian Top Ten Northwest Book of the Year
"...Barnes channels the experiences chronicled in her indelible memoir, In the Wilderness, into fiction latticed with mystery, animated by myth, spiked with menace, and rooted in the raw poetry of the Idaho landscape. This archetypal tale of paradise lost begins when Thomas Deracotte, a newly minted doctor, and his new wife, Helen, leave Connecticut for Idaho to start a rural practice and farm. The only smart thing they do is hire Manny, a self-reliant orphan of many trades. Deracotte has also had a rough life, unlike wealthy Helen, who defied her family to marry him. They are abysmally ignorant about farming, and Deracotte is no doctor. A daughter, Elise, is born. Bewitched by the land, Deracotte turns feral, and Helen despairs. It’s up to Manny to run the show. The potential for tragedy is so intense, one seems to sense the approach of a stalking predator in dense woods. Then, as Elise comes of age and struggles to understand her strange, haunted household and painful legacy, the great wheel of life turns and new sorrows are sown. Barnes ascends in this incandescent novel of sacrifice and devotion, wildness and civilization. Such anguish, such beauty. "--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A newly married couple abandon the comfort of upper-class Connecticut and stake their claim in 1960s Fife, Idaho, in Pulitzer-finalist Barnes's exquisite novel. Thomas and Helen Deracotte—he a young, poor doctor, she a stifled, monied rebel—buy an isolated farm sight unseen and arrive to find it a shambles. Upon arriving in the inhospitable wilderness, Thomas realizes that he would rather live off the land for their daily sustenance than open his own medical practice, and he hires Manny, a handsome teenage vagabond, to help around the farm. When Helen has baby girl Elise, Manny ingratiates himself further with the Deracottes and becomes a loving caretaker. But when the new mother begins to feel suffocated and overwhelmed, she returns to her rebellious ways and finds herself powerfully attracted to Manny. Their relationship has dire consequences for all involved—particularly for Helen and Elise, but nobody gets off easy. Barnes's descriptions of the rugged landscape are vivid, and the characters' sadness and desires are revealed with wrenching detail. "--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Gorgeously written . . . lush and memorable. . . . A Country Called Home contains whispers of its literary ancestors but issues its own rich-throated cry into the wilderness.” –Kansas City Star
“In the literature of the American frontier, few setups are as fertile and reliable as the Easterner come West. . . Because [Barnes] knows the territory so intimately, A Country Called Home is filled with exquisitely etched landscapes. The novel brims with the smell of brambles and berries along an Idaho riverbank, the gritty feel of the dust in an abandoned homesteader’s shack, the sounds of grouse and quail in the fields.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Casts light on the yearning, restless human heart. . . . Powerful.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“In the tradition of the great Western writer Willa Cather, Kim Barnes has written a novel [that is] deeply rooted in the soil of her native Idaho.”–The Oregonian
“Quietly haunting…. [Barnes’s] descriptions of the rugged landscape quiver with stark beauty, wisdom and redemptive grace, much as her characters do.” –The Washington Post
“The idealistic dreams and careless attitudes of the 1960s echo through this powerful novel…. Barnes captures Northwest country with a poet’s eye.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Brilliant. . . . One of three epigraphs, from master writer John Gardner, reads, ‘The fall from grace is endless.’ And so it is with Manny, Thomas, Helen and Elise, who are always and slowly losing the battle not just with nature, but with themselves.” –St. Louis Post Dispatch
“A Country Called Home, like many Western works of its kind, is a story of perseverance. Barnes’s characters, all carrying their own secret pain, barely keep their heads above the waters that rage around them, literally and figuratively. . . . An elegy of sorts, to the power of the natural world, the lives it so indifferently claims, and the grace with which those affected respond to its blows.” –The Oregonian
“A Country Called Home is poetically written. The vivid descriptions of the land paint a romantic portrait of the wilderness, where the couple dream they’ll find their ideal life but soon discover that nothing comes easy.” –Las Vegas Review-Journal
“Barnes’s prose is lovely, often incantatory, as she weaves the story of the troubled Deracotte family.” –New West
“At the heart of this disturbing novel set in the Idaho wilderness is the desperate hunger of its characters to escape ennui and emptiness–in short, to find love. . . . Written in beautiful poetic prose, A Country Called Home is highly recommended.” –The Tennessean
“A Country Called Home feels like a classic. . . . An engrossing, sometimes heartbreaking read with a leavening of hopefulness, Kim Barnes’s new novel is not to be missed.” –Bookreporter
“Barnes’s use of language is stunning, making you want to reread paragraphs out loud to someone else so they can enjoy it with you.” –Sacramento Book Review
“Kim Barnes’s new novel is an exquisitely complex story, by turns pointed and poignant, about everything that matters: family, loyalty, religion, memory, love. With a master's skill Barnes paints a world tinged with loss, adeptly depicting sentiments left unspoken, relationships stunted by the hard winds of grief and guilt, and singular moments full to brimming with natural beauty and grace.” –Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
“The country through which Kim Barnes characters travel in this novel of spiritual and emotional searching is a landscape eroded by grief and yearning and ultimately shame for our dissolution from our gods. I finished reading A Country Called Home some time ago and still cannot quite move on from the experience.” –Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life
“A Country Called Home is a weave of human longings, accurate in its rendering of the ways they accumulate. . . . Give it a while, watch it come to life, and you’ll find yourself rationing the pages, wishing it was longer.” –William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field
“A seductive book of love and obsession. . . . Some books are easily put down, but the best of them, like A Country Called Home, won’t let go of you.” –Claire Davis, author of Winter Range
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A Kansas City Star Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
An Oregonian Top Ten Northwest Book of the Year
"...Barnes channels the experiences chronicled in her indelible memoir, In the Wilderness, into fiction latticed with mystery, animated by myth, spiked with menace, and rooted in the raw poetry of the Idaho landscape. This archetypal tale of paradise lost begins when Thomas Deracotte, a newly minted doctor, and his new wife, Helen, leave Connecticut for Idaho to start a rural practice and farm. The only smart thing they do is hire Manny, a self-reliant orphan of many trades. Deracotte has also had a rough life, unlike wealthy Helen, who defied her family to marry him. They are abysmally ignorant about farming, and Deracotte is no doctor. A daughter, Elise, is born. Bewitched by the land, Deracotte turns feral, and Helen despairs. It’s up to Manny to run the show. The potential for tragedy is so intense, one seems to sense the approach of a stalking predator in dense woods. Then, as Elise comes of age and struggles to understand her strange, haunted household and painful legacy, the great wheel of life turns and new sorrows are sown. Barnes ascends in this incandescent novel of sacrifice and devotion, wildness and civilization. Such anguish, such beauty. "--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
"A newly married couple abandon the comfort of upper-class Connecticut and stake their claim in 1960s Fife, Idaho, in Pulitzer-finalist Barnes's exquisite novel. Thomas and Helen Deracotte—he a young, poor doctor, she a stifled, monied rebel—buy an isolated farm sight unseen and arrive to find it a shambles. Upon arriving in the inhospitable wilderness, Thomas realizes that he would rather live off the land for their daily sustenance than open his own medical practice, and he hires Manny, a handsome teenage vagabond, to help around the farm. When Helen has baby girl Elise, Manny ingratiates himself further with the Deracottes and becomes a loving caretaker. But when the new mother begins to feel suffocated and overwhelmed, she returns to her rebellious ways and finds herself powerfully attracted to Manny. Their relationship has dire consequences for all involved—particularly for Helen and Elise, but nobody gets off easy. Barnes's descriptions of the rugged landscape are vivid, and the characters' sadness and desires are revealed with wrenching detail. "--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Gorgeously written . . . lush and memorable. . . . A Country Called Home contains whispers of its literary ancestors but issues its own rich-throated cry into the wilderness.” –Kansas City Star
“In the literature of the American frontier, few setups are as fertile and reliable as the Easterner come West. . . Because [Barnes] knows the territory so intimately, A Country Called Home is filled with exquisitely etched landscapes. The novel brims with the smell of brambles and berries along an Idaho riverbank, the gritty feel of the dust in an abandoned homesteader’s shack, the sounds of grouse and quail in the fields.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Casts light on the yearning, restless human heart. . . . Powerful.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“In the tradition of the great Western writer Willa Cather, Kim Barnes has written a novel [that is] deeply rooted in the soil of her native Idaho.”–The Oregonian
“Quietly haunting…. [Barnes’s] descriptions of the rugged landscape quiver with stark beauty, wisdom and redemptive grace, much as her characters do.” –The Washington Post
“The idealistic dreams and careless attitudes of the 1960s echo through this powerful novel…. Barnes captures Northwest country with a poet’s eye.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Brilliant. . . . One of three epigraphs, from master writer John Gardner, reads, ‘The fall from grace is endless.’ And so it is with Manny, Thomas, Helen and Elise, who are always and slowly losing the battle not just with nature, but with themselves.” –St. Louis Post Dispatch
“A Country Called Home, like many Western works of its kind, is a story of perseverance. Barnes’s characters, all carrying their own secret pain, barely keep their heads above the waters that rage around them, literally and figuratively. . . . An elegy of sorts, to the power of the natural world, the lives it so indifferently claims, and the grace with which those affected respond to its blows.” –The Oregonian
“A Country Called Home is poetically written. The vivid descriptions of the land paint a romantic portrait of the wilderness, where the couple dream they’ll find their ideal life but soon discover that nothing comes easy.” –Las Vegas Review-Journal
“Barnes’s prose is lovely, often incantatory, as she weaves the story of the troubled Deracotte family.” –New West
“At the heart of this disturbing novel set in the Idaho wilderness is the desperate hunger of its characters to escape ennui and emptiness–in short, to find love. . . . Written in beautiful poetic prose, A Country Called Home is highly recommended.” –The Tennessean
“A Country Called Home feels like a classic. . . . An engrossing, sometimes heartbreaking read with a leavening of hopefulness, Kim Barnes’s new novel is not to be missed.” –Bookreporter
“Barnes’s use of language is stunning, making you want to reread paragraphs out loud to someone else so they can enjoy it with you.” –Sacramento Book Review
“Kim Barnes’s new novel is an exquisitely complex story, by turns pointed and poignant, about everything that matters: family, loyalty, religion, memory, love. With a master's skill Barnes paints a world tinged with loss, adeptly depicting sentiments left unspoken, relationships stunted by the hard winds of grief and guilt, and singular moments full to brimming with natural beauty and grace.” –Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
“The country through which Kim Barnes characters travel in this novel of spiritual and emotional searching is a landscape eroded by grief and yearning and ultimately shame for our dissolution from our gods. I finished reading A Country Called Home some time ago and still cannot quite move on from the experience.” –Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life
“A Country Called Home is a weave of human longings, accurate in its rendering of the ways they accumulate. . . . Give it a while, watch it come to life, and you’ll find yourself rationing the pages, wishing it was longer.” –William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field
“A seductive book of love and obsession. . . . Some books are easily put down, but the best of them, like A Country Called Home, won’t let go of you.” –Claire Davis, author of Winter Range
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Seven years separate Buddy from his big brother, Lee, but the boys have always been close, comforting and protecting each other as their father--defeated by poor land and hostile weather--sank deeper into alcohol and rage. When a drink-fueled accident takes not only his life but that of the mother who tried so hard to shield her sons, the boys sell off what little remains of their daddy's tenant farm and leave Oklahoma. It is 1957, and work is still to be had in the logging camps of northern Idaho. But just outside Snake Junction, they stop at a roadhouse, and there, Lee's country-and-western talents get him a job. The two settle in, Lee to his music--and women and drink--and seventeen-year-old Buddy to roaming the landscape, at loose ends until a woman nearly twice his age turns up. Irene Sullivan is a smoky beauty, and Lee makes a play for her. But it is Buddy she wants. By turns darkly violent and heartbreakingly tender, Finding Caruso is a work of extraordinary emotional power from an astonishingly original writer.
"[S]tunningly dramatic and tensely erotic....Barnes is as fluent in provocative metaphors as she is in scenes of profound conflict and revelation..."--Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
"This is a wonderful bildungsroman....The plot twists and expertly drawn characters make this a solid selection for males and females alike, and it is the kind of tale that will promote itself from reader to reader. Highly recommended."--Nancy Zachary, KLIATT Review
“Too good a story to forget…her book [has] the complexity of life.” Chicago Tribune
"Barnes, a published poet, skillfully uses language to paint an affecting picture of the rural West and its lonely inhabitants." Library Journal Review
"Debut novels are seldom as seducing....her talent...is remarkable." Daily Oklahoma Review
"An absolutely original voice. A thoroughly engaging, often funny and at times incredibly moving story...suffused with the bittersweet lessons of growing up too quickly — and not quickly enough."--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Solid, evocative…poignant writing about first love…Barnes’s rich, multilayered prose makes this an engaging read."--Publishers Weekly
"Language with Bible cadences…[it] goes from reflection to immediacy in a heartbeat…masterful…beautiful.”--The Portland Oregonian
"Kim Barnes writes with great honesty, beauty and compassion.... This book is terrific."-- Chris Offutt, author of The Good Brother
"In language both poetic and spare, Finding Caruso tells a compelling story of passion, despair, and redemption. Kim Barnes has written a great novel of the American West, one that will thrill you with its deep beauty and dark grace."--Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
"Finding Caruso is an immensely satisfying read, full of the stuff that enriches the best of the great modern American western novel. This is the luminous follow-up for readers who love Norman McClean and Larry McMurtry and Thomas McGuane. Barnes's Buddy Hope is as winning and memorable a hero as you could hope to know, and this novel is a beautiful and bittersweet testament to the enduring character of the West."--Antonya Nelson, author of Nobody's Girl
"Here is a story of brothers learning to be men--a story of young men learning to be wise. Finding Caruso is song elevated to psalm."--Mark Spragg, author of The Fruit of Stone
"With prose that is as lyrical and generous as the landscape she portrays, Kim Barnes explores the complexities of familial ties, from their bright passions to their bitter betrayals. Finding Caruso is a work of extraordinary beauty by a writer whose regard for human frailty is both wise and unflinching."--Claire Davis, author of Winter Range
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"[S]tunningly dramatic and tensely erotic....Barnes is as fluent in provocative metaphors as she is in scenes of profound conflict and revelation..."--Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
"This is a wonderful bildungsroman....The plot twists and expertly drawn characters make this a solid selection for males and females alike, and it is the kind of tale that will promote itself from reader to reader. Highly recommended."--Nancy Zachary, KLIATT Review
“Too good a story to forget…her book [has] the complexity of life.” Chicago Tribune
"Barnes, a published poet, skillfully uses language to paint an affecting picture of the rural West and its lonely inhabitants." Library Journal Review
"Debut novels are seldom as seducing....her talent...is remarkable." Daily Oklahoma Review
"An absolutely original voice. A thoroughly engaging, often funny and at times incredibly moving story...suffused with the bittersweet lessons of growing up too quickly — and not quickly enough."--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Solid, evocative…poignant writing about first love…Barnes’s rich, multilayered prose makes this an engaging read."--Publishers Weekly
"Language with Bible cadences…[it] goes from reflection to immediacy in a heartbeat…masterful…beautiful.”--The Portland Oregonian
"Kim Barnes writes with great honesty, beauty and compassion.... This book is terrific."-- Chris Offutt, author of The Good Brother
"In language both poetic and spare, Finding Caruso tells a compelling story of passion, despair, and redemption. Kim Barnes has written a great novel of the American West, one that will thrill you with its deep beauty and dark grace."--Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
"Finding Caruso is an immensely satisfying read, full of the stuff that enriches the best of the great modern American western novel. This is the luminous follow-up for readers who love Norman McClean and Larry McMurtry and Thomas McGuane. Barnes's Buddy Hope is as winning and memorable a hero as you could hope to know, and this novel is a beautiful and bittersweet testament to the enduring character of the West."--Antonya Nelson, author of Nobody's Girl
"Here is a story of brothers learning to be men--a story of young men learning to be wise. Finding Caruso is song elevated to psalm."--Mark Spragg, author of The Fruit of Stone
"With prose that is as lyrical and generous as the landscape she portrays, Kim Barnes explores the complexities of familial ties, from their bright passions to their bitter betrayals. Finding Caruso is a work of extraordinary beauty by a writer whose regard for human frailty is both wise and unflinching."--Claire Davis, author of Winter Range
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From the author of the critically acclaimed In the Wilderness comes a riveting new narrative of self-discovery and personal triumph. Hungry for the World is the story of how an intelligent and passionate young woman, yearning for an understanding of the world beyond her insular family life, found her way. On the day of her 1976 high school graduation in Lewiston, Idaho, Kim Barnes decided she could no longer abide the patriarchal domination of family and church. After a disagreement with her father – a logger and fervent adherent to the Pentecostal Christian faith – she gathered her few belongings and struck out on her own. She had no skills and no funds, but she had the courage and psychological sturdiness to make her way and to eventually survive the influence of a man whose dominance was of a different and more menacing sort. Hungry for the World is a classic story of the search for knowledge and its consequences, both dire and beautiful.
A Borders Books New Voices selection
"Whether she is recreating the drama of her struggles or conjuring the Idaho wilderness in lyrical passages, Barnes writes beautifully."--Publishers Weekly Review
"...beautifully written...[Barnes describes] her ordeal powerfully... We read her story and bleed for her."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Review
"Barnes' second memoir circles back to her first, In the Wilderness, and reveals a chasm in her personal landscape that she previously left unexplored. She briefly revisits her childhood to reestablish her love for nature and her conflicted relationship with her parents, whose Pentecostal faith so alienated her as a teenager... Young and oppressed by her parents' isolating beliefs and her inability to please her unreachable father, she readily absorbs the message that women want to be dominated and hurt by men. This poison works a dark magic, leading first to a warped sense of self and then to enthrallment to a man who makes such cruel fantasies come true. Candid but dignified, this is a profoundly disturbing story of what can happen to women who are taught to loathe and fear their sexuality, and Barnes tells it with consummate skill, courage, and generosity, transforming her pain into an antidote for others."--Donna Seaman, Booklist
"A work that's a powerful cross – part Loretta Lynn, part Thomas Wolfe.... Barnes displays more expertise with hunting and guns than Hemingway, and more knowledge of sylvan botany and zoology than Thoreau. The lyrical cadence of her description is what truly elevates the memoir to literature....Barnes has given American literature its first cowgirl classic."-- Kirkus Reviews
"[Barnes’s] memoir serves as a vehicle for the process of grieving; it’s a lovely funeral, dedicated to her lost youth…. It is refreshing to read such a moving story of human regeneration."--Fort Worth Star Telegram
"[A] luminous extension of [the] genre..."--LA Style
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A Borders Books New Voices selection
"Whether she is recreating the drama of her struggles or conjuring the Idaho wilderness in lyrical passages, Barnes writes beautifully."--Publishers Weekly Review
"...beautifully written...[Barnes describes] her ordeal powerfully... We read her story and bleed for her."--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times Review
"Barnes' second memoir circles back to her first, In the Wilderness, and reveals a chasm in her personal landscape that she previously left unexplored. She briefly revisits her childhood to reestablish her love for nature and her conflicted relationship with her parents, whose Pentecostal faith so alienated her as a teenager... Young and oppressed by her parents' isolating beliefs and her inability to please her unreachable father, she readily absorbs the message that women want to be dominated and hurt by men. This poison works a dark magic, leading first to a warped sense of self and then to enthrallment to a man who makes such cruel fantasies come true. Candid but dignified, this is a profoundly disturbing story of what can happen to women who are taught to loathe and fear their sexuality, and Barnes tells it with consummate skill, courage, and generosity, transforming her pain into an antidote for others."--Donna Seaman, Booklist
"A work that's a powerful cross – part Loretta Lynn, part Thomas Wolfe.... Barnes displays more expertise with hunting and guns than Hemingway, and more knowledge of sylvan botany and zoology than Thoreau. The lyrical cadence of her description is what truly elevates the memoir to literature....Barnes has given American literature its first cowgirl classic."-- Kirkus Reviews
"[Barnes’s] memoir serves as a vehicle for the process of grieving; it’s a lovely funeral, dedicated to her lost youth…. It is refreshing to read such a moving story of human regeneration."--Fort Worth Star Telegram
"[A] luminous extension of [the] genre..."--LA Style
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Poet Kim Barnes grew up in northern Idaho, in the isolated camps where her father worked as a logger and her mother made a modest but comfortable home for her husband and two children. Their lives were short on material wealth but long on the riches of family, friendship, and the great sheltering power of the wilderness. But in the mid-1960's, as automation and a declining economy drove more and more loggers out of the wilderness and into despair, Kim's father dug in and determined to stay. It was then the family turned fervently toward Pentecostalism. It was then things changed.
In the Wilderness is the poet's own account of a journey toward adulthood against an interior landscape every bit as awesome, as beautiful, and as fraught with hidden peril as the great forest itself. It is a story of how both faith and geography can shape the heart and soul, and of the uncharted territory we all must enter to face our demons. Above all, it is the clear-eyed and moving account of a young woman's coming of terms with her family, her homeland, her spirituality, and herself.
In presenting Kim Barnes the 1995 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work-in-progress by an emerging woman writer of nonfiction, the panel of judges wrote that "In the Wilderness is far more than a personal memoir," adding that it stands "almost as a cautionary example of the power of good prose to distinguish whatever it touches." Indeed, In the Wilderness is an extraordinary work, courageous, candid, and exquisitely written.
Winner of the 1995 PEN/Jerard Fund Award
Recipient of 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award
Finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the 1997 PEN/Martha Albrand Award
Finalist for the QPBC New Visions Award
“We readers often approach poets’ memoirs warily: There is only so far that lovely, delicately crafted reminiscences of childhood can really take us. They deliver pleasure, easily, but rarely go beyond it to the kind of bold, perspective-wrenching joy that is the province of real literature. Barnes’s book forces reconsideration of the form…. This is a book about humility, and how one is of one’s origins, no matter how far a person has traveled in imagination, artistry, and insight.” --Library Journal
"Sad and beautiful...a book about humility, and how one is of one's origins, no matter how far a person has traveled in imagination, artistry, and insight."--Kirkus Reviews
“With its spirit and themes, [In the Wilderness] recalls the classic Norman Maclean autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It....” --Detroit Free Press
“Kim Barnes’ elegiac memoir is an eloquent cry of loss for the Idaho forest in which, as a logger’s child, she spent the first twelve years of her life.” --San Francisco Chronicle
"Moving...precise and honest...[Barnes] draws the extraordinary out of everyday life."--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Engrossing...revealing, spiritual, cleansing, transcendent--and awash in the elements that make life's flow so unpredictable, wonderful, and often haunting."--Chicago Tribune
“It is a testimony to Barnes’ skill as a writer that she visits both heaven and hell without exaggerating her experience. Her voice is trustworthy and riveting throughout the book. I stayed up most of the night to read on. I was never disappointed.”-- Eugene Weekly
“Barnes writes forgivingly about an unforgiving world, and her work shines with both innocence and wisdom.” --Glamour
“Barnes chronicles a young life at battle with a community and a faith she never quite makes her own. Written from the heart...a mesmerizing read....her perspective is unapologetic and unself-pitying, making for a truly haunting tale.” --New Woman
"In this amazing book, Kim Barnes defines the manacles that have bound Western women since the time of St. Paul with a love that constitutes a true 'turning of the cheek.' Then--without gross generalizations or ideological expounding, without playing the victim or seeking caustic revenge, relying on nothing but the beautifully expressed witness of a solitary and heroic girl's life--she just as lovingly unlocks and steps free of those manacles. This story is an answer to a calling first heard in the wilderness. It's a child's promise to her parents and her God. It is a healing."--David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K
"Kim Barnes's vivid first book offers a wild, clean, poetic account of a singular journey through a childhood wilderness and adolescent badlands. Barnes writes with great beauty and temperance about spiritual and sensual battles, and the result is compelling in every way."--Jim Grimsley, author of Winter Birds
"In the Wilderness is a rarity. Kim Barnes re-creates the ecstasy and terror of her adolescence in the big timber country of Idaho with taste and generosity. It is a world of hope and doubt, trust and betrayal, in which believers fast, demons appear, and children heal the sick. In the tradition of David McKain's Spellbound, Barnes gives the reader everything and spares herself nothing. Her sure voice delivers the true drama of her family's struggle with the sixties, the church, each other, and, ultimately, their own faith."--Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels
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In the Wilderness is the poet's own account of a journey toward adulthood against an interior landscape every bit as awesome, as beautiful, and as fraught with hidden peril as the great forest itself. It is a story of how both faith and geography can shape the heart and soul, and of the uncharted territory we all must enter to face our demons. Above all, it is the clear-eyed and moving account of a young woman's coming of terms with her family, her homeland, her spirituality, and herself.
In presenting Kim Barnes the 1995 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work-in-progress by an emerging woman writer of nonfiction, the panel of judges wrote that "In the Wilderness is far more than a personal memoir," adding that it stands "almost as a cautionary example of the power of good prose to distinguish whatever it touches." Indeed, In the Wilderness is an extraordinary work, courageous, candid, and exquisitely written.
Winner of the 1995 PEN/Jerard Fund Award
Recipient of 1997 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award
Finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize
Finalist for the 1997 PEN/Martha Albrand Award
Finalist for the QPBC New Visions Award
“We readers often approach poets’ memoirs warily: There is only so far that lovely, delicately crafted reminiscences of childhood can really take us. They deliver pleasure, easily, but rarely go beyond it to the kind of bold, perspective-wrenching joy that is the province of real literature. Barnes’s book forces reconsideration of the form…. This is a book about humility, and how one is of one’s origins, no matter how far a person has traveled in imagination, artistry, and insight.” --Library Journal
"Sad and beautiful...a book about humility, and how one is of one's origins, no matter how far a person has traveled in imagination, artistry, and insight."--Kirkus Reviews
“With its spirit and themes, [In the Wilderness] recalls the classic Norman Maclean autobiographical novella A River Runs Through It....” --Detroit Free Press
“Kim Barnes’ elegiac memoir is an eloquent cry of loss for the Idaho forest in which, as a logger’s child, she spent the first twelve years of her life.” --San Francisco Chronicle
"Moving...precise and honest...[Barnes] draws the extraordinary out of everyday life."--Philadelphia Inquirer
"Engrossing...revealing, spiritual, cleansing, transcendent--and awash in the elements that make life's flow so unpredictable, wonderful, and often haunting."--Chicago Tribune
“It is a testimony to Barnes’ skill as a writer that she visits both heaven and hell without exaggerating her experience. Her voice is trustworthy and riveting throughout the book. I stayed up most of the night to read on. I was never disappointed.”-- Eugene Weekly
“Barnes writes forgivingly about an unforgiving world, and her work shines with both innocence and wisdom.” --Glamour
“Barnes chronicles a young life at battle with a community and a faith she never quite makes her own. Written from the heart...a mesmerizing read....her perspective is unapologetic and unself-pitying, making for a truly haunting tale.” --New Woman
"In this amazing book, Kim Barnes defines the manacles that have bound Western women since the time of St. Paul with a love that constitutes a true 'turning of the cheek.' Then--without gross generalizations or ideological expounding, without playing the victim or seeking caustic revenge, relying on nothing but the beautifully expressed witness of a solitary and heroic girl's life--she just as lovingly unlocks and steps free of those manacles. This story is an answer to a calling first heard in the wilderness. It's a child's promise to her parents and her God. It is a healing."--David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K
"Kim Barnes's vivid first book offers a wild, clean, poetic account of a singular journey through a childhood wilderness and adolescent badlands. Barnes writes with great beauty and temperance about spiritual and sensual battles, and the result is compelling in every way."--Jim Grimsley, author of Winter Birds
"In the Wilderness is a rarity. Kim Barnes re-creates the ecstasy and terror of her adolescence in the big timber country of Idaho with taste and generosity. It is a world of hope and doubt, trust and betrayal, in which believers fast, demons appear, and children heal the sick. In the tradition of David McKain's Spellbound, Barnes gives the reader everything and spares herself nothing. Her sure voice delivers the true drama of her family's struggle with the sixties, the church, each other, and, ultimately, their own faith."--Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels
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