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Sign up todayLittle Century
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Learn moreA charged and eloquent novel about a young woman caught in the midst of the range wars in the American West at the turn of the century
Orphaned after the death of her mother, eighteen-year-old Esther Chambers heads west in search of her only living relative. In the lawless frontier town of Century, Oregon, she’s met by a sunburnt, laconic cattle wrangler: her distant cousin, Ferris Pickett. Within days, Esther is perjuring herself at the county clerk’s office, swearing that she is twenty-one and ready for the rigors of homesteading. Pick leads her to a tiny cabin that shows daylight at the chinks, and Esther begins her new life on the small lake called Half-a-Mind. If she can hold out for five years, the land will join Pick’s already impressive spread. Land—there’s a lot of it wide-open in Century but, somehow, not enough. Esther has arrived in the middle of a range war; it’s cattle against sheep, and water’s at a premium. Small incidents of violence swiftly escalate; before long, blood spills on the dry ground, and the railroad starts to think twice about laying tracks through Century. No railroad means no town, something Pick and his men will go to any lengths to prevent. Meanwhile, Esther finds her sympathies divided between her cousin and a sheepherder named Ben Cruff, a sworn enemy of the cattle ranchers. As her passion for Ben and her land grows, she begins to see how at odds these things are with her cousin’s own interests. She can’t be loyal to both; at some point she’ll have to make a terrible choice. Little Century maps our country’s cutthroat legacy of dispossession and greed; it also celebrates the ecstatic visions of what America could become. Through Esther’s story, which veers between triumph and heartbreak, we see the American West as it was being forged. In the tradition of classics like My Ántonia and There Will Be Blood, Little Century is a resonant and moving debut novel by a gifted writer.
Anna Keesey is a graduate of Stanford University and of the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, and her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. She’s the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship and has held residencies at MacDowell, Bread Loaf, Yaddo, and Provincetown. She has taught English and creative writing, most recently at Northwestern University and Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon.
Tavia Gilbert has recorded hundreds of titles across a wide span of genres, including Erica Spindler romantic thrillers, John Scalzi science fiction, Jeaniene Frost fantasy. She received four Audies nominations and won three Audiofile Earphones Awards for titles The Obituary Writer, Sing Them Home and The Day of the Pelican. In addition to voice acting, Gilbert is an accomplished producer, singer and theater actor.
Reviews
“‘One place understood helps us understand all other places better,’ Eudora Welty once said, and such is the case in this outstanding debut. Anna Keesey renders Little Century’s time and place marvelously, but the novel’s concerns are timeless and universal. With its beautiful language, memorable characters, and compelling story, Little Century is sure to gain a wide and appreciative audience.”
“In this novel of stunning beauty, Anna Keesey gives us the American West at the turn of the century and a cast of unforgettable characters who will risk anything to tame it. Oregon’s hardscrabble frontier comes utterly alive for us, and in prose so lovely, spot-on, and accomplished, I found myself dog-earing nearly every page. An incredible debut—and a writer to watch.”
“Dwindling resources, bribery, and corruption—issues as current as this morning’s newspaper—mix with optimism in Little Century, Anna Keesey’s briskly romantic, nontraditional Western…It’s Willa Cather with a sense of humor…Keesey portrays her men and women as deeply flawed but so achingly vulnerable that it is impossible not to identify with them.”
“Little Century is rich and true and achingly beautiful. Its heroine, Esther Chambers, is the kind found in the best of classic literature: an innocent caught against the backdrop of escalating violence, whose essential goodness and loyalty shines through the savagery around her.”
“Keesey debuts with a confidently energetic tale…While Keesey offers a variety of characters with intriguing stories of their own, it is the richly depicted setting—from desert to dry good store—that showcases her talent.”
“Highly entertaining reading. First novelist Keesey has produced a top-notch novel of Western Americana.”
“Keesey writes lyrically and examines the ferocity of frontier life with an unromantic and penetrating gaze.”
“Here is a fine novel, written with grace, about the settling of Oregon and the evening redness in the West. In the desert town of Century, haunted by Indian blood and barren to the core, the cattlemen hate the shepherds and the shepherds hate the cattlemen. But as the community is about to consume itself with greed and vengeance, a young orphan from Chicago shows up with a moral clarity that outstrips her age, to remind us that character matters and that justice is pursuant to conscience. Little Century is a frontier saga, a love story, and an epic of many small pleasures.”
“Anna Keesey conjures her Western landscape of ranches and homesteads with painterly richness, but it’s her uncanny historical imagination that really takes the breath away. Her characters pulse with life; their times feel as immediate, as urgent and vital, as our own.”
“This is a beautiful and completely absorbing book. In spare, luminous prose, Keesey perfectly conjures the textures, characters, and urgency of life in Century. I read it at a gallop and didn’t want it to end.”
“Anna Keesey’s debut novel is historical fiction at its finest—precise and particular in detail, character, and setting, yet vast and epic in scope and theme. Little Century is a remarkable achievement.”
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