Earthtones: A Nevada Album by Ann Ronald (review)

Reviews Earthtones: A Nevada Album. Text by Ann Ronald and photographs by Stephen Trimble. (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1995. 120 pages, $39.95.) Earthtones is a delightful book with a serious mission: to refute the stereotype that for too long has characterized Nevada, in John Muir’s unfortunate words, as “singularly barren,” “gray and forbidding and shadeless.” Ann Ronald and Stephen Trimble want nothing less than to teach us to see Nevada anew. To that end, Ronald insists we adopt a desert aesthetic. We must heed Wallace Stegner’s call “to get over the color green,” for only then can we see how “dryness generates beauty of its own.” A respected Edward Abbey scholar and former dean at the University of Nevada, Ronald knows her subject well. She adroitly guides her readers to sites ranging from the well-known and readily accessible—Rhyolite, Valley of Fire—to places she describes vividly but politely refuses to name. Her word-paintings skillfully evoke the color and form of the desert landscape. She describes a rock formation as “almost frothy, like rock-solid meringue”; elsewhere she focuses on the land’s vastness and subtle synesthesia, describing how, in the “immense otherness of a playa” it is “possible to hear nothing at all.” Seeing wild horses in a storm, she notes “the electric beauty of their flight, and the smell of ozone and wet sage.” Stephen Trimble’s photographs range from the subtle to the spectacu­ lar. I found particularly striking the images ofthe narrows of Lowell Wash and the cliffs of Cathedral Gorge State Park. A few photos—such as the panoramic view of Jeff Davis Peak—might profitably have been displayed in a larger size, but overall the book’s design is crisp and professional. Earthtones won the Wilbur S. Shepperson Humanities Book Award for 1995, and deservedly so. It will delight readers who already know 72 Western American Literature Nevada well. More important, it extends an irresistible invitation to those who would like to know the state better. DAVID MAZEL University of West Alabama Imagining Home: Writing from the Midwest. Edited by Mark Vinz and Thom Tammaro. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. 212 pages, $19.95.) Editors Vinz and Tammaro cite Growing Up in Minnesota, edited by Chester G. Anderson, as an inspiration for undertaking this project. There is little similarity between the two, however. Growing Up focuses on child­ hood narratives, while the mostly upper midwestern writers featured in Imagining Home were asked to explore the influence of “place” on their “development,” which some approached more literally than others. The Anderson volume seems almost programmed for cultural diversity, yet achieves a unified effect. The focus ofImagining Home provides for a much broader range of responses, although its contributors are, for the most part, white and middle class, and these essays reflect that background. Although much of this volume suffers from self-consciousness, several pieces resonate. In “The Roosting Tree,” for instance, Mary Swander explores effectively her conflict between wanderlust and a desire to put down roots. Bill Holm’s provocative “Is Minnesota in AmericaYet?” argues that the vitality of America is linked to the degree that its immigrants remain unassimilated. Carol Bly anatomizes the development of a height­ ened class consciousness in “The Maternity Wing, Madison, Minnesota” with sly wit. The editors’goal in presenting this collection to the public is to encour­ age readers to explore the influence of place “in their own lives.” This is reflected in the title, which suggests a unifying theme: coming to terms with a particular place as an act of creativity. The essays are grouped under three headings, “Discovering a Home,” by non-native midwesterners; “Recovering the Past,” by natives; and “The Changing Present.”This arrangement helps improve order, though the head­ ings, along with the title and introduction (the most obvious of the editors’ contributions), seem designed to generate “My Hometown” freshman English papers or creative writing class discussions. Readers would do well to approach each essay on its own terms. GORDON JOHNSTON Three Rivers Community College ...