On Top of Spoon Mountain


Book Description

Jonathan Kepler wants to climb Spoon Mountain with his grown son and daughter on his sixty-fifth birthday in three weeks. Ben and Miranda, think he's crazy. For starters, Spoon Mountain is almost the tallest alpine peak in New Mexico. Jonathan's health is terrible. They once shared halcyon days at Spoon Mountain, but can they revisit the past? Does Spoon Mountain offer redemption, or annihilation? And why is getting there so laden with pratfalls?




On Top of Spoon Mountain


Book Description

Jonathan Kepler wants to climb Spoon Mountain with his grown son and daughter on his sixty-fifth birthday in three weeks. The kids, Ben and Miranda, think he’s crazy. For starters, Spoon Mountain is almost the tallest alpine peak in New Mexico. Jonathan’s health is terrible. Still reeling from his third, nearly fatal, divorce, he has a rotten heart, serious asthma, and a fed-up girlfriend who is about to drop him like a bad habit. Once a celebrated novelist, Hollywood screenwriter, and environmental activist, Jonathan is now tottering at the ragged end of his career and yearning to make amends to his children for his past sins before it’s too late. Years ago, Spoon Mountain was very special to the Kepler family. They once shared halcyon days in the wilderness. Can they go home again? Does Spoon Mountain offer redemption . . . or annihilation? And why is getting there so laden with pratfalls? John Nichols is at his hilarious and poignant best in this rollicking tale of love, anarchy, and the awesome Rocky Mountains. It is drop-dead comedy with an inspiring and beautiful message.




The Mountains-to-Sea Trail Across North Carolina: Walking a Thousand Miles through Wildness, Culture and History


Book Description

The Mountains-to-Sea Trail shows off the most spectacular, historic and quirky elements of the North Carolina landscape. Stretching one thousand miles from Clingmans Dome in the Smokies to Jockey's Ridge State Park in the Outer Banks, the route takes in Fraser fir trees and pelicans, old grist and textile mills, working cotton and tobacco farms, Revolutionary War sites and two British cemeteries complete with Union Jacks. The trail is half on footpaths and half on back roads, offering experiences not only in nature but also in small towns, at historic monuments, in family cemeteries and in local shops. Author Danny Bernstein has taken it all in and shares her knowledge for those who might follow in her footsteps.




Tilt


Book Description

In Tilt: Finding Christ in Culture, Brian Nixon takes the reader on a voyage of discovery, traveling the currents of God's presence in culture, summed up in four streams that define a noun: people, places, things, and ideas. In his journey, Nixon touches upon people as diverse as Andy Warhol, Cormac McCarthy, Robert Redford, and Georgia O'Keeffe; places such as Canterbury, England, and Las Vegas, Nevada; things as unique as typewriters, trains, and abstract art; and ideas as fascinating as mathematics and beauty. In these short impressionistic pieces, Nixon, with the curiosity of a journalist, elicits intelligent discussion and poetic articulations, prompting a head tilt from those who join him on a theo-cultural expedition.




I Got Mine


Book Description

I Got Mine: Confessions of a Midlist Writer is the memoir of Nichols’ extraordinary life, as seen through the lens of his writing. Everything that went into making him a writer and eventually found an outlet in his work—his education, family, wives, children, friends, enemies, politics, and place—is told from the point of view of his daily practice of writing. Beginning with his first novel, The Sterile Cuckoo, published in 1965 when he was just twenty-four, Nichols shares his highs and lows: his ambivalent relationship with money; his growing disenchantment with the hypocrisy of capitalism; and his love-hate relationship with Hollywood—including the years-long struggle of working with director Robert Redford on the film version of The Milagro Beanfield War, which was filmed around Truchas and featured many of Nichols’ northern New Mexico neighbors. Throughout I Got Mine Nichols spins a shining thread connecting his lifelong engagement with progressive political causes, his passionate interest in and identification with ordinary people, and his deep connection to the land.




Spoon


Book Description

Meet Spoon. He's always been a happy little utensil. But lately, he feels like life as a spoon just isn't cutting it. He thinks Fork, Knife, and The Chopsticks all have it so much better than him. But do they? And what do they think about Spoon? A book for all ages, Spoon serves as a gentle reminder to celebrate what makes us each special.




An Elegy for September


Book Description

He is fifty, a man of middle years with a weak heart and two failed marriages. Mourning the loss of the boundless energy he squandered as a young man, he is a creature of habit now, relying on daily patterns to pace himself, to conserve what is left. She is nineteen, young enough to be his daughter, full of the vitality of youth and fearless—or perhaps only blind to the dangers life brings. Spare and moving, An Elegy for September captures the turning point in the life of a man as he confronts his own mortality—and confronts truths about himself he never suspected. Featuring some of John Nichols’s best writing, An Elegy for September is a brief, poignant, and eloquent novel that renders an age-old story in a fresh and powerful form. “One of the finest things he has ever written.”—Los Angeles Times




The Annual Big Arsenic Fishing Contest!


Book Description

On the surface this book spins a fisherman’s tall tale about a ribald angling contest between three middle-aged friends who love (and perhaps hate) each other: a preppy trilingual Machiavelli, an intellectual ghetto pool shark, and a brawny Texan who defies his own macho stereotype. All professional writers, the men have met every autumn for eighteen years at the Big Arsenic Springs on the Río Grande to fly-cast for trout and argue about life, literature, marriage, and eco-Armageddon. Their escapades reveal a spirited paean to a beautiful river gorge, and also a poignant cautionary fable about male friendship and cutthroat competition. As aging cripples them all, tragedy mars the tournament. In this insightful and bittersweet love story, masterful storyteller John Nichols brings to life northern New Mexico and three unforgettable characters.




Conjugal Bliss


Book Description

What happens when two oft-divorced and middle-aged sex fiends tie the knot again? Birds do it, bees do it, and Roger and Zelda do it whenever their teenage kids aren’t looking. Their ecstasy is boundless. But when the darker side of Paradise rears its comical head, they suddenly find themselves trapped in a Three Stooges movie directed by Freddy Krueger. This takeoff on matrimony will make you laugh, scream, or grind your teeth in recognition. If you are hitched yourself, take three Valiums before reading!




American Blood


Book Description

Michael Smith survives the Vietnam war only to find himself angry and adrift in a United States at war with itself. Though he cannot forget the pornographic atrocities he witnessed abroad, it is the pervasive brutality of civilian life that threatens to destroy him until he lands in a tormented yet life-saving relationship. First published in 1987 and now available to a new generation of readers, this disturbing novel foreshadows twenty-first-century headlines that feature assault rifles and mass murders. American Blood is a timely and fiercely moral statement on violence and loss. “One of the most intense anti-war books since The Red Badge of Courage.”—Rocky Mountain News “An auspicious literary event. . . . The America he describes, the nation bathed in blood, the people who keep loaded guns by their pillows, are more real here than in the news . . . yet it leaves us with wisdom and hope.”—Ray Mungo, San Francisco Chronicle