“Sun Dog Days,” by Slim Randles, (University of New Mexico Press, $24.95, 189 pages)
Buck is a man cursed by a love of horses. Thoughts of them come in the night but “more often just before dawn, that time when I used to get up and stumble out of the bunkhouse into the frosty snap of a desert morning.” But now Buck is finally happily married to a woman with two kids he cares about and a good job as an editor of an outdoor magazine.
Then Smokey shows up. Buck’s best friend from the days when he was a young cowboy and a packer, he uses the pretext that he is dying of cancer to lure Buck away for one last run at the wild horses that still haunt both their dreams.
Even as Buck tells his wife, Jan, he will be back soon, he worries the absence will be too much for them to handle so soon into their marriage. Yet the pull of returning, however briefly, to what he still thinks of as the best part of his life is too strong to resist.
He and Smokey pick up supplies and head into the Coso Mountains at the edge of Death Valley. The days are hard on human beings in Death Valley, but Buck knows the nights make up for it. He revels in the space, the feel of a good bay horse under him.
After a few days, both men get over the stiffness. Their bodies once again are tuned to the horses. “There is a memory built into the mind and the muscles that, once learned, never disappears.” But at night, Buck’s thoughts return to his wife and the bad feelings left between them.
Then one day he and Smokey see them. “Hundreds of wild horses in the sage-dotted valley were before me, mostly bays and blacks with some buckskins sprinkled through the herd like salt. … The handwriting is on the wall for wild horses. Yes, they are protected now. … Yet they are prey to crowding, disease, starvation and death.” And he readies himself and his horse to rope one
“Sun Dog Days,” by a syndicated columnist who lives in Albuquerque, is a poignant, sensitively written story with nice touches of humor about friendship and a man’s struggle to come to terms with his longing for a world that no longer exists and the one he can’t afford to lose.
“Rain in the Valley,” by Helen Papanikolas (Utah State University Press, $17.95, 248 pages)
“Rain in the Valley” is the American story of leaving the old behind and starting over in a strange new land. This particular tale concerns the Demospoulos family. Times are hard in early 20th-century Greece, and the decision is made to grab for the gold ring in America’s wild West.
Changing their name to Demos, the men find work in the mines as the women nourish tradition, cook and clean and have babies, subservient as they were in the old country. The families gradually settle in. Some of the men become wool growers while others start small businesses. But marriages are still arranged, and the children go to Greek school as well as the public school in town. All but Lia, the child of a forced marriage between her Greek father and American mother, who quietly shapes her own life.
She goes to college, marries Jim Papastmos before he goes overseas during World War II. After he returns injured, both physically and mentally, he decides to go out on his own in the sheep business. They have children. Then synthetics start to take the place of wool. One generation dies; another takes its place. Yet ultimately the family ties never quite lose their hold.
While “Rain in the Valley” lacks many of the customary elements of the novel, it offers a fine historical view of a rich Greek culture and its contributions to the West. The author, who was widely known as a pre-eminent narrator of the Greek-American experience, completed the novel shortly before her death in 2004.
Sybil Downing is a Boulder novelist who writes a monthly column on new regional fiction.
