by Ted Conover, 2022
This is our second book for Old Town Book Club 2024-2025, to be discussed on November 4th. Such a readable book! It’s about the people who live on raw land in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. He is an investigative journalist, grew up in Denver but now lives in New York City. It is after the 2016 election and Trump has been elected. He wants to discover more about the people who live out of the norm, away from it all. He volunteers with La Puente (“the bridge”), which is an organization to help the poor in Alamosa. He meets many, many off-gridders and we get intimate with them. His writing style is so smooth and easy, yet detailed. We learn all about these people. There are sexual predators, alcoholics, meth-heads, unhealthy obese smokers. Many are Trump supporters. Almost all love guns. But he is non-judgmental. He lives in a trailer alongside a family with 4 daughters who own lots of animals. The mom and dad, Stacy and Frank, have had rough lives but are making it on the prairie as best they can. Neither graduated from high school. Stacy is home-schooling the 4 girls. They are happy, active girls. Almost all the people on the prairie grow marijuana and smoke it. There is animosity between the Costilla County code enforcers (Hispanic) and those who live on the flats (mostly poor whites). The code enforcers will give tickets for not having a septic system and give them 2 weeks to get one or they have to leave or face steep fines. A septic system costs $19,000 and it takes a year sometimes to get one. There are some established homesteads but most are derelict trailers running generators or solar powered or wind-powered. The winds and the cold are brutal. The author falls in love the San Luis Valley and buys his own place and builds a fence to keep the cows out.
Very good book – really takes you into the lives of the people who choose to live out there. I don’t like them at all. They believe bullshit, they support Trump, they are unhealthy and ignorant. But Ted Conover is completely unbiased in his writing – he just gives the details in very smooth and picturesque and flowing words. Good book!