FORTY FREEDOMS; A Novel

Silver City, NM: High-Lonesome Books, 2010. First edition. Hardcover. New in New DJ. 6 x 9, 244 pgs, illustrated. One hundred thousand acres of public land, complete with a year-round trout stream, potential ski resort, and butted up against the burgeoning town of Del Cobre, New Mexico, is something the local boomers and boosters - the "money men" -- can't resist. Stuffed with dreams of growth and privatization, they will stop at nothing to "add another room onto the house." Others are equally committed to saving these wild lands and waters from the roar of the bulldozer. Recalcitrant mountain man Harley Simmons (anti-hero of the previous Home is the River) teams with itinerant bookman and master polemicist Jason Niles (Signal to Depart) to make a desperate stand in the name of wild trout, resource sustainability, and the heritage of the hunter. Narrated by Harley's often beleaguered but always clear-eyed son, Alvin, Forty Freedoms reads as a compelling campfire tale. In the tone of a latter-day Huck Finn, his story of clashing cultures, animal rights fanatics and reluctant poachers, feral hogs, hounds and hunting lore, and the fateful doings of an unfaithful woman, finally reveals what's really happening in the modern West.