Cowboys are My Weakness, Stories by Pam Houston

Deep Creek, Pam Houston's memoir and journal of her ranch in the mountains of Colorado, was the first work by Houston that I read, and I quickly resolved to read more. Fortuitously, Houston's debut story collection happened to pass through my bookshop and I snatched it up. The twelve stories therein are brief - the entire book is less than two hundred pages - but they are winners all. Powerful writing often comes in slim packages. They all take place in the American West, a territory that is both mythical and very real all at once. The women we bear witness to are strong in different ways, but all looking for love and tenderness. They are more or less linked, and possibly several are about the same person, and probably many are what we would now call auto-fiction. The stories are funny and sad and sweet, dangerous and hopeful, quiet or roaring and always riveting. I can see why the collection was such a sensation when it was published nearly thirty years ago; they still make for a delectable read, and I only wish there were more.

Are you in the Napa area? Pam Houston will be speaking at the Napa Library April 25th!