Another Country: Encounters with the Red Rock Deserts

by John A. Murray

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1555663206
• ISBN13: 9781555663209
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Johnson Books
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Appreciating observations

To a sharp eye, the peeling plates of ponderosa pine bark are, indeed, as John Murray writes, smooth and the color of cinnamon. They are not just rough and scabby as they appear from a distance. I have touched them to my lips, and I concur. Thank you John for writing this book, risking your impressions, and taking the time to look into things.

A special book about a special place

John Murray is one of the best writers on the West practicing today, perhaps the best. He has authored or edited more than forty books including such classics as Desert Awakenings, Cactus Country, and the highly acclaimed American Nature Writing series.This book is a collection of fifteen essays and fifteen stories, both fiction and nonfiction, that celebrate what Murray describes as the most beautiful desert in the American Southwest, the Red Rock Desert. It is loosely located in a triangle shape anchored by the Gates of Ladore to the north, the Grand Wash Cliffs to the southwest, and the Zuni Mountains on the southeast. All things considered, a pretty good boundary description for the Colorado Plateau and the four-corners area. Indeed, the twenty-one locations of his stories and essays are in southern Utah, northern Arizona, and western Colorado.In his incomparable style of graceful prose and lyrical musings Murray takes the reader into the world of form and color that define such diverse locations as Monument Valley, Escalante Canyon, Navajo Mountain, Grand and Coyote Gulch, Wilson Mesa, Professor Valley, the Burr Desert and a host of other locations that form this wonderland of incredible beauty and harmony and time and space. Using the desert as a metaphor the stories tell of life and death, greed, togetherness and separation, hope and despair and a myriad of other conditions that are so like the West itself. The essays describe the ever changing beauty and danger of the rivers and canyons and space, indeed all of the flora and fauna that comprise the Red Rock Desert and reveals Murray's deep affection for, and encyclopedic knowledge of, this special place. The following from the Afterword will give the reader an idea of the special talent of Murray: "I only know this. There are few things as beautiful as the shapes a desert river carves in the rock of a country, or the way a canyon rose holds it wine-colored blossom toward the sun, or the sound of the wind as you climb to the summit of a solitary peak. To have been among these places is to have known a happiness not often found elsewhere in this world."Truly a special book about a special place.

Red Rock Rhapsody - and Reality

John A. Murray's latest book, "Another Country: Encounters with the Red Rock Desert," is a tour de force. Murray has created a new genre, alternating non-fiction nature writing with gutsy, O. Henry-surprising short stories. A lesser writer might founder with this format, but Murray brings home the goods. From a touching elegy for his mother ("Sandpainting") to hard-ball, edgy murder and action ("The World Behind the Sun"), the author writes with a deft, sure hand and leaves no false notes. Tying the work together is the place, the sun-splashed, crimson walls of the Four Corners region, Hillerman country, Abbey country - and, now, Murray country. You can't fail to want to grab your sleeping bag, lace up your boots, and head out for a hike to the Red Rock wilderness after reading this book. And after reading the title story, a gut-wrencher with a surprise ending, you'll also remember to bring along a gallon or two of water.This book is great stuff. Buy it.