A Booklist starred review selection
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Award-winning author Jana Richman brings us an emotional journey of love, loss, and family.
It is not often that a novel of literary fiction incorporates the complexities of a specific, current, and controversial issue, but Jana Richman’s The Ordinary Truth does just that, with astounding insight and a captivating, heartrending narrative. The recently proposed Nevada pipeline, which would pump water from the desert valleys of Eastern Nevada and Western Utah to Las Vegas, is a component of conflict in the novel. For the Jorgenson family and the close-knit Spring Valley community, the pipeline would mean the end of their cherished ranching lifestyles. When Kate Jorgenson becomes a spokesperson for the Southern Nevada Water Authority and defends the creation of the pipeline, her already-damaged relationships with her rancher mother, Nell, and environmentalist daughter, Cassie, seem beyond repair.
ISBN: 978-1937226-06-0/ $16.95 / 302 pages / Trade Paperback / November 2012
Distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution: 1-800-283-3572
A Conversation with Jana Richman
Jana Richman, a sixth-generation Utahn, was born and raised in Utah’s west desert. She writes about issues that threaten to destroy the essence of the west: overpopulation, overdevelopment, rapidly dwindling water aquifers, stupidity, ignorance, arrogance and greed. She also writes about passion, beauty, and love. She is the author of the memoir, Riding in the Shadows of Saints: A Woman’s Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail, and the novel, The Last Cowgirl, winner of the Willa Award for contemporary fiction. She lives in Escalante, Utah, with her husband, writer and transpersonal therapist, Steve Defa.
Reviews and Interviews
Booklist starred review
The Ely Times
The Deseret News
Praise for The Ordinary Truth
“With tough women and sensitive men, desert-dry humor, hot-springs sensuality, heartbreaking secrets, escalating suspense, and a 360-degree perspective on the battle over water, Richman’s twenty-first-century western is riveting, wise, and compassionate.” — Donna Seaman, Booklist starred review
“ . . . with a unique voice, Richman crystallizes how secrets and silences flow through the generations . . . with depth of characters, beauty of language, and a haunting understanding of the landscapes that define us.”
—Jane Kirkpatrick, bestselling author of Where Lilacs Still Bloom
“The Ordinary Truth tells a page-turner of a story about love and loyalty, loss and regret—and, ultimately, the stunning absolution of the simple truth. Richman writes . . . with the sure hand of a formidable storyteller.”
—Stephen Trimble, author of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America
For more information, please email anne@torreyhouse.com.
