In A Strong West Wind, an account of a Texas high plains girlhood, author Gail Caldwell evokes a sense of place through many descriptive passages, often involving her father. She writes, for example, “When I was a girl of nine or ten, my dad would take me along on autumn dawns to go quail and dove hunting, out to the far reaches of the Caprock, past towns named Muleshoe and Dimmitt to prairies so remote and unrelenting that even the phone lines seemed to disappear as we drove into morning light. I had hitched this ride into rough country as unofficial bird dog: All I really had to learn, cloth bag in hand, was how to retrieve. [ . . . ] Why he took me along with him—well, certainly it was not to learn to shoot. I was still too young, and my father belonged to the Texas patriarchy that was overprotective of its females even as it drove them toward heroic feats. I think he just wanted the company—that, and he may have wanted me to show me what was out there on those gorgeously bleak and empty plains. All that God and nothingness were the closest either of us ever got to a true sunrise congregation. [. . . ] Those graceful passages we shared would be his indemnity against the unknown territories of tomorrow. That is one of love’s great laws: The father instructs, the child ingests, until memory itself becomes the long way home.” In Caldwell’s handling, landscape, family, identity, and memory itself become inextricable. In part, we should admire the way in which the stark flat emptiness of the plains dwarf human figures even as they foreground the image of the father and daughter, alone together in that vastness. It is no wonder, as we witness Caldwell’s imagery of the plains, that the author seems to be haunted by sense of place.
Join me – Alex Hunt as we consider Caldwell’s imagery and sense of place as part of the Radio Readers Book Club. You’ll find us under the Features page at hppr.org where you’ll find book discussion guides with information about your fellow Radio Readers as well as thoughts and recommendations from readers across the High Plains.
About Alex Hunt:
Alex Hunt, Professor of English at West Texas A&M in Canyon, Texas. Having published extensively on topics related to the American West and Southwest, Dr. Hunt believes that the fact that he moved often during his growing up years gives him a critical edge when thinking about a sense of place and particularly as it is portrayed in literature.
