Bruce Holbert – författare

What do rock stars, Nobel laureates, bestselling novelists, astronauts, and attorneys have in common? A teacher changed their lives. Like them, most of us can name a teacher who gave us not only good instruction but also confidence and drive. But, in the face of teachers being blamed for a variety of social and economic woes, teachers themselves can easily wonder whether they are making a difference in students’ lives. When veteran teacher Bruce Holbert asked himself this question, his wife, Holly, responded by sending letters to hundreds of people she had never met and had no reason to believe would respond, asking about teachers who mattered to them. She was overwhelmed by answers. Thank You, Teacher presents more than eighty of these up-close-and-personal stories. By a delightfully diverse range of contributors, these essays are wise and witty testaments to the teachers who do what they do every day without expecting recognition, but who so richly deserve it.

In Lonesome Animals, Arthur Strawl, a tormented former lawman, is called out of retirement to hunt a serial killer with a sense of the macabre who has been leaving elaborately carved bodies of Native Americans across three counties. As the pursuit ensues, Strawl’s own dark and violent history weaves itself into the hunt, shedding light on the remains of his broken family: one wife taken by the river, one by his own hand; an adopted Native American son who fancies himself a Catholic prophet; and a daughter, whose temerity and stoicism contrast against the romantic notions of how the west was won. In the vein of True Gritand Blood Meridian, Lonesome Animals is a western novel reinvented, a detective story inverted for the west. It contemplates the nature of story and heroism in the face of a collapsing ethos –not only of Native American culture, but also of the first wave of white men who, through the battle against the geography and its indigenous people, guaranteed their own destruction. But it is also about one man’s urgent, elegiac search for justice amidst the craven acts committed on the edges of civilization.

Lonesome Animals was named as a Best Book of 2012 by both The Seattle Times and Slate, a literary debut sparking with beautiful language set against the rugged landscape of 1920s Washington state. Holbert returns with The Hour of Lead, an epic family novel and coming of age story that is once again imbibed with the mythology of the west.After losing both his twin and his father in a brutal, unexpected snowstorm, Matt Lawson must take over the family ranch. As his mother disappears into grief, Matt learns the hardest lesson the west has to teach: he is on his own. The necessity of work stabilizes young Matt against the pitfalls of first love with Wendy, the daughter of a local grocer, and their ragged end will sent Matt on a journey across the county, leaving Wendy to tend the ranch with local schoolteacher Linda Jefferson and her unwieldy son Lucky. It will take decades for Matt to learn his way back home, and that long journey will have great impact on all of those around him.Invoking the same beautiful landscape and language of his critically-acclaimed debut, The Hour of Lead is a wider, more expansive novel, less violent but just as affecting, another important contribution to the literature of the west.

«Tengo el poder del oso (Mahyó hotah) y, cuando lo necesito, me da fuerza.» Son palabras de Alce Negro, el célebre hombre medicina de los sioux. Pero Alce Negro lleva ya cuarenta y un años criando malvas en Manderson White Horse Creek, sus frases son pasto de hippies, los osos hace tiempo que no quieren saber nada del tema y todas las promesas han sido violadas. En la gramola ya solo suena el blues de la reserva: tierra yerma, casinos, chatarra, minas de uranio abandonadas, alcohol y paro.El momento es el verano de 1991. El lugar, Electric City, Washington, al sur de la reserva de los indios colville. Más concretamente, la barra de la taberna de Eddie «el Loco», donde los hermanos White, Andre y Smoker, de sangre mestiza, el residuo de la combustión de tres generaciones de gente averiada y batallas perdidas, se dan cita todas las noches para lamentarse y revolcarse en los escombros.Todo cambia el día en que un fanático religioso de dudosas intenciones secuestra a la hija de Smoker. Los dos hermanos cogerán sus rifles, se subirán a una vieja camioneta y saldrán en busca de la niña, como John Wayne en Centauros del desierto, pero al revés y muy borrachos. En el camino, invocarán el poder del oso, aunque no podrán evitar viajar bajo el influjo de Coyote (Sinkalip en lengua salish), el incomprensible héroe tribal, que lo único que busca es jugársela a Topo, copular con sus parientes y derrotar a Perro Monstruo. Como en los viejos tiempos de Caballo Loco, emprenderán una última incursión, heroica y descabellada, que acabará con ellos o los redimirá para siempre.