(In Winter Range, the intimate details of ranching and sma...)
In Winter Range, the intimate details of ranching and small-town life are woven into the suspenseful story of three people struggling to survive, to belong, and to love in the chillingly bleak landscape of eastern Montana. Ike Parsons is a small-town sheriff whose life is stable and content; his wife Pattiann is a rancher's daughter with a secret past. But when Ike tries to help a hard-luck cattleman named Chas Stubblefield, he triggers Chas's resentment and finds his home and his wife targeted by a plot for revenge.
(When tragedy leaves her life in shambles, Nance flees her...)
When tragedy leaves her life in shambles, Nance flees her Wisconsin hometown and its reminders of grief, creating a new life in the West. She is a scientist, specializing in rattlesnakes and attrition rates in dens, believing that "you can overcome fear, control the level of risk by being prepared, by knowing your subject." Now with a home in Lewiston, Idaho, overlooking the Snake River, and her marriage to Ned Able, a grade school principal, Nance finally feels at peace. Then an unexpected visit from her wayward sister Meredith revives old family conflicts and resurrects a secret life that has long lain dormant in Ned. While Nance and Meredith mend their relationship, Ned's other nature begins to emerge, transforming him in ways that Nance denies, until, with the help of her sister, she is made to see what lies beneath the skin.
("Adultery" follows a middle-aged man who learns that his ...)
"Adultery" follows a middle-aged man who learns that his mother is cheating on her new husband. In "Grounded," a mother doggedly follows her son as he tries to run away along Montana's highways. And in the title story, a lonely man is literally struck by love for a woman he sees at the supermarket. These stories trace the hidden longings of seemingly stoical people, seeking out the rifts and ruptures in their quiet lives.
(Adam is cool, intelligent, and drop-dead gorgeous - all t...)
Adam is cool, intelligent, and drop-dead gorgeous - all the guys tell him so! When he is forced to start voluntary work at the local homeless shelter, all he worries about is keeping the clients well away from him and finishing the placement as soon as possible. Until he meets Tork. Tork is clever and funny. He makes origami models and reads Dickens. Tork has green hair and makes Adam's heart race with longing. But Tork is homeless and not at all impressed with Adam's attitude.
(Cobweb ghosts are so inconvenient - especially grumpy one...)
Cobweb ghosts are so inconvenient - especially grumpy ones with bad breath. Don't they know silence is golden? Johnny Strong is the expert; he hasn't spoken in two years. Not one word to anyone except the ghost. The main purpose of life is to avoid people and being noticed. Friends? He doesn't need them; and certainly, nobody wants him despite what the ghost says. Until a new boy appears - Finn Lyons, teenage wizard. He eats frogs, concocts potions, and is always hungry. Not only does Finn stand up for Johnny; he actively seeks his company and soon becomes part of life. First love; family and words; a heady mix to go in the potion but how will it all turn out? Hubble bubble; Johnny Strong's in trouble! Silence is not always golden in this sweet, zany story of purest magic.
(After a failed attempt at college, Luke lives a quiet exi...)
After a failed attempt at college, Luke lives a quiet existence with his dad. He recovers from bitter disappointment and gradually life returns to a regular rhythm. Every day he gains confidence, but with health comes boredom. From the window ledge, he watches people outside and wishes he could be like them. There's another side to Luke. Underneath his bed are five hidden pairs of jeans with matching Dr. Martens: yellow, purple, striped, green and tartan. Some days he feels the itch to get them out. One day, an amazing thing happens. Dynamic blog artist Formaldehyde Bob comes to town with an exhibition of light and dark. Luke has crushed on him since being fifteen, idolizing the man and his unusual creations. Something about the art calls to Luke like nothing else, makes him believe there might after all be someone out there who thinks in the same way.
Claire Davis is a United States novelist, writer, author, educator, who is famous for her debut novel "Winter Range." She also taught at Lewis-Clark State College and contributed to different editions.
Background
Claire Davis was born on January 27, 1949, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. She started writing stories at about eight or nine years, as soon as she could reasonably put pen to paper. Claire was frustrated when the books she read ended, so she wrote new endings or sequels. When she was nine, Claire read Jack London and realized that was what she wanted to do with life and she believed she could do it. And so she was soon making up her own adventures on the page. Her father was always encouraging. He took her aside and said: "Whatever you want to do, we'll put you through what schooling you need. If you want to write, that's what you should do." Her mother, on the other hand, was a practical, no-nonsense woman who was still firmly grounded in the belief that women couldn't do certain things. She wanted nothing more for Claire Davis than security. "Ach," she said, "What's writing going to get you? Chicken one day, feathers the next."
Education
Claire Davis earned her undergraduate degree at Evergreen College. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana in 1993.
When she was young, Claire Davis worked for Wisconsin Telephone. While earning her master's degree in fine arts at the University of Montana, Davis worked at an independent bookstore in Missoula, an experience she later realized was important to her career as a writer. As a student, she wrote poetry and short stories. Claire Davis joined the English department of Lewis-Clark State College in 1994 as an adjunct professor. She is retired now.
Claire Davis, like many women busy with their daily lives, postponed her writing dreams until she was in her mid-thirties. In 2000, she made a strong debut on the literary scene with the novel Winter Range. "I was in graduate school in Montana when a particularly ugly case of abuse was prosecuted in the eastern part of the state. It was a couple who, it turned out, had a history of starving their horse herds. It started me thinking about who would do such a thing, and what the reaction would be in a community so invested in the idea of independence and personal property. And what if someone "outside" of that community was faced with the dilemma," - she described the idea to write this book. Drawing on her experience as a transplanted Midwesterner as well, Davis first put all of these "what ifs" together into a not-so-short story which begged to become a novel. It eventually became Winter Range, which recounts the tale of Chas Stubblefield, a rancher who is too proud to ask for help when he faces bankruptcy and the starvation of his cattle and horses. Ike Parson, the sheriff and a newcomer to Montana, having married local woman Pattiann, tries to deal with the situation and faces new challenges within the community. In her second novel, Season of the Snake, Davis painted the landscape along the Snake River in Washington and Idaho. However, she moved into new ground with a work that blended a psychological thriller with a relationship novel.
Davis, working with Kim Barnes, served as editor for the 2006 work, Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty. The collected essays debunked the myth that a woman's life is over after her 30s. The contributors included well-known writers, such as Julia Glass and Pam Huston. Davis also published a volume of short stories in 2006, Labors of the Heart: Stories, which was a feature on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts as performed on stage at Symphony Space in New York. She also taught Pacific University's low-residency Master of Fine Arts program in Forest Grove, Ore. She is a contributor of stories and poems to journals, including Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and Southern Review.
(Cobweb ghosts are so inconvenient - especially grumpy one...)
2017
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As an educator, Claire Davis brought an abundance of knowledge and wisdom to the classroom in the form of her travels and insights into the human experience. In particular, her International Literature class was an eye-opening journey through the writings of authors and poets from multiple nations, in an effort to understand not only the differences but the similarities people of one culture share with other cultures. She believes that people consider something "weird," because they have been steeped in one way of viewing literature, reading literature, or understanding the story primarily coming from their culture or background.
While Claire Davis has begun her literary and academic path in her 30's, she exhibits a sense of being connected to and understanding the role that technology has played in daily life, including the effect it has had on the consumption of literature. Although the number of students who actively read for pleasure has dropped substantially over the years, Davis understands a trend of "self-correction" in the pace of film media.