A Country Called Home

A Country Called Home

A powerful novel of young love and rural isolation from the acclaimed author ofIn the Wilderness.Thomas Deracotte is just out of medical school, 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 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. An extraordinary story of hope and idealism,A Country Called Home is a testament to the power of family-the family we are born to and the family we create.ReviewAKansas City Star Best Book of the YearAWashington Post Best Book of the YearAnOregonian Top Ten Northwest Book of the Year?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 as 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 ?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.