Augusta Locke

by William Haywood Henderson

Book Overview

One woman?s tough, spirited life in the deserts and lonely ranges of the twentieth-century West Novelist William Haywood Henderson has won acclaim for his precisely rendered and achingly beautiful evocations of land and nature and his ability to bring to vivid life the contemporary West of ranch hands and drifters. Of his most recent novel, The Rest of the Earth, Annie Proulx remarked that Henderson writes some of the most evocative and transcendently beautiful prose in contemporary American literature.?Set primarily in Wyoming, Henderson?s new novel is the chronicle of six generations of a family, viewed through the lens of one woman?s very long life. Augusta Gussie? Locke is born in Minnesota in 1903. As a teenager she moves west with her mother to Colorado and then runs away from home. A one-night stand with a traveling soldier leaves her pregnant, and with her daughter, Anne, she eventually finds a life in Wyoming running supplies to oil and mineral crews in the Great Basin Divide. Through the years, Gussie keeps moving, abandoning people and places, being abandoned herself; Anne runs away just as her mother had, never to be seen again. Settling in the Wind River Range, Augusta, alone again, builds a new life until, years later, her grandson and great-granddaughter seek to discover the woman behind the family myth. Spanning the twentieth century, Augusta?s extraordinary trials and tribulations play out themes of love and loss, redemption and reconciliation. Redolent with myth, humor, strange landscapes, and stark reality, Augusta Lockeis an indelible portrait of a woman who through great spirit and toughness of character blazes her own trail.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670034916
• ISBN13: 9780670034918
• Release Date: April 2006
• Publisher: Viking Books
• Length: 419 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.2" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Augusta Locke

Augusta Locke is one of the most compelling characters to emerge from the American West. The unbeautiful daughter of beautiful parents, a girl with a wandering habit who walks into Wyoming, she grows into a woman who reads the mind of the country around her -- the Wind River Range, the Great Divide Basin, the Big Sandy River, land where "the season can swing from heat to snow and back in the turn of a day." In Henderson's flat-out gorgeous prose, Gussie's life feels epic, not because the events that make it up are so big, but because we follow her so closely, watching her seasons change. She's a self-made orphan, a fierce mother, a lonely lover, a rough road worker, a woman in a man's world, sometimes a woman in a man's clothing. In the vast plains, such a small female figure might go unnoticed, her life leaving a shallow track like the roads "so barely scratched into the surface that a shift in the angle of the sun would erase them altogether," but Augusta Locke will live with you long after you finish the book and try to put her back on the shelf.

Incredible Book

Augusta "Gussie" Locke is one of the most facinating and fully drawn female literary characters in recent memory. Her defiant, independent spirit is both inspiring and deeply moving. Henderson paints vivid and palpable landscapes of the West with some of the most beautiful prose I have ever read about the region. This book is not just for Westerners - although, I suspect that Westerners will particularly appreciate it. The book's great humanity, and staggering portrayal of the natural world, make it a must-read for everyone. I could not more highly recommend Augusta Locke.

Great Book

Augusta Locke is one of those rare novels that makes you appreciate good, detailed writing. I loved taking my time reading this book. I am looking forward to this author's next endeavor.

Beautiful story of one woman's journey through the rugged west

Augusta Locke is as wild as the landscape she inhabits. Unable to sit still when her mother marries a man who'd like to tame her wandering ways, she escapes into the wild west. She lives as the men around her live, by ranching and working for the oil crews. Yet, in the midst of this rough life, she remains very much a woman. A one night stand early in her journey leaves her pregnant and she gives birth to a daughter who is destined to leave her, as well. Henderson's descriptions of the landscape, the hardscrabble existence and the people Augusta encounters on her journey, are among the most beautiful being penned today. The land itself becomes a character worth knowing in this beautifully wrought novel. Well worth the read.

A work of beauty

Augusta Locke is one of those rare books that takes you to a new place and time and allows you to walk around in it. And what a relief to read of a character you've never met before. Gussie is not your everyday scrappy cross-dressing survivor; she's at times heroic, cowardly, selfish and selfless. She's a winning loser; an uncannily self-directed woman who also, at times, is completely lost. To embrace these contradictions is the mark of a writer. To make the reader believe them is the work of an artist.