Arcadia Books

Ginger Gaffney in conversation with Pam Houston

Thursday April 16 | 6:00PM - 7:00PM

at the

A free non-ticketed event open to the public.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

“Ginger Gaffney writes the intricacies of the equine-human relationship as well as I have ever seen it written….She knows a horse’s mind as well as she knows her own. You will remember the tenacious and utterly winning people that populate Half Broke for a long, long time, and you will never forget the horses.”- PamHouston, author of Deep Creek

A top-ranked horse trainer’s gorgeous, life-affirming memoir that offers profound insight into the fascinating ways both horses and humans seek relationships to survive.

At the start of this remarkable story of recovery, healing, and redemption, Ginger Gaffney answers a call to help retrain the troubled horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico, a facility run entirely by the prisoners. The horses are scavenging through the dumpsters, kicking and running down the residents when they bring the trash out after meals. One horse is severely injured.

The horses and residents arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many: the horses are defensive and terrified, while the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addictions, are emotionally and physically shattered. With deep insight into how animals and humans communicate through posture, body language, and honesty of spirit, Gaffney walks us through her struggle to train the untrainable.

Gaffney peels away the layers of her own story―a solitary childhood, painful introversion, and a transformative connection with her first horse, a filly named Belle―and she, too, learns to trust people as much as she trusts horses. As her year-long odyssey builds toward a dramatic conclusion, the group experiences triumphs and failures, brave recoveries and relapses, as well as betrayals and moving stories of trust and belonging.

Resonant, smart, and beautifully written, Half Broke tears at the heart of what it takes to find wholeness after years of trauma and addiction and offers profound insight on how working with animals can satisfy our universal need for connection.

Ginger Gaffney is a top-ranked horse trainer. She received an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and her work has been published in Tin House and Utne Reader. She lives in Velarde, New Mexico.

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On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what ties her to the earth, the ranch most of all. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep, the ranch becomes Houston’s sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her after a childhood of horrific parental abuse and neglect.

In essays as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston’s most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief… to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.”

Pam Houston is the author of two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me. She is professor of English at the University of California–Davis.

Local Author Showcase

Saturday May 09 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM

Discover new books, meet area authors, and have your books signed!

at the

A free non-ticketed event open to the public.
Doors open at 1:30 p.m.

Featuring

DAVE GOODWIN

Perfect for fans of Randy Wayne White's Doc Ford and Robert B. Parker's Spencer!

After 25 years on the job, Detective Roscoe Conklin trades his badge for a pair of shorts and sandals and moves to Bonaire, a small island nestled in the southern Caribbean. But the warm water, palm trees, and sunsets are derailed when his long-time police-buddy and friend back home is murdered. Conklin dusts off a few markers and calls his old department, trolling for information. It's slow going, but no surprise there; after all, it's an active investigation, and his compadres back home aren't saying a damn thing. He's 2,000 miles away, living in paradise. Does he really think he can help? They suggest he go to the beach and catch some rays. For Conklin, it's not that simple. When a suspicious mishap lands his significant other, Arabella, in the hospital, the island police conduct, at best, a sluggish investigation, stonewalling progress. Conklin questions the evidence and challenges the department's methods. Something isn't right...Arabella wasn't the intended target. He was.

Davin Goodwin is a graduate of Arkansas State University and works in the technology industry. He has been a small business owner, a real estate investor, an aerial photographer, a flight instructor, a semi-professional banjo player, and— important to Diver’s Paradise—a scuba diver, often seen on the island of Bonaire. Diver’s Paradise is his debut novel and he intends to continue writing the Roscoe Conklin series, set in Bonaire. Goodwin lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife, Leslie.

KRISTA EASTMAN

In this often-surprising book of essays, Krista Eastman explores the myths we make about who we are and where we’re from. The Painted Forest uncovers strange and little-known “home places”—not only the picturesque hills and valleys of the author’s childhood in rural Wisconsin, but also tourist towns, the “under-imagined and overly caricatured” Midwest, and a far-flung station in Antarctica where the filmmaker Werner Herzog makes an unexpected appearance.

The Painted Forest upends easy narratives of place, embracing tentativeness and erasing boundaries. But it is Eastman’s willingness to play—to follow her curiosity down every odd path, to exude a skeptical wonder—that gives this book depth and distinction. An unlikely array of people, places, and texts meet for close conversation, and tension is diffused with art, imagination, and a strong sense of there being some other way forward. Eastman offers a smart and contemporary take on how we wander and how we belong.

Krista Eastman's writing has earned recognition from Best American Essays and appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review (KROnline), New Letters, and other journals. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

MARCUS SULLIVAN

In That Time tells the story of the American experience in Vietnam through the life of Michael O’Donnell, a bright young musician and poet who served as a soldier and helicopter pilot.

"Dan Weiss has told a compelling story about the creative and artistic spirit of one soldier, but learning about Michael O'Donnell forces us to remember that there were more than 58,000 such stories. Each of these deaths is like a jagged scar on the soul of our nation, made all the more infuriating for having occurred as part of a poorly explained and inconclusive war."—William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense, 1997-2001

Author Daniel H. Weiss is the president and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With his permission, Michael O'Donnell's close friend and fellow musician Marcus Sullivan (featured in the book) will talk about the young man who inspired the book.

Christina Clancy

Saturday June 06 | 4:00PM - 5:00PM

In conversation with Erin Celello
at the

A free non-ticketed event open to the public.
Doors open at 3:30 p.m.

Praise for The Second Home—

"Christina Clancy writes with warmth, wit, and wisdom about fantastically human characters. A novel of family and place and belonging for fans of Ann Packer and J. Courtney Sullivan."—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers

"I gobbled The Second Home in a matter of days, fully invested in the history, hurt, and hopes of this very human family. Christina Clancy writes with empathy and rich detail: to read about the Gordons is to smell the pine and oak of Wellfleet, to tread the well-worn rooms of their eccentric summer home, and to learn all sides of the explosive rift that sent them hurtling in different directions. Tender and suspenseful, Clancy's debut explores the nature of home as well as the nature of family itself—given and chosen."—Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

"A sure-footed ode to the strength of family, the depth of loss, and the power of forgiveness."—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

For three very different siblings, a summer house on Cape Cod holds their childhood memories, their tangled family history, and their most closely guarded secrets. In this assured and affecting debut, Christina Clancy evokes the enduring nostalgia of summers past as she introduces you to a family you'll quickly fall in love with and won't soon forget.

Christina Clancy teaches English at Beloit College and holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin. She grew up spending two weeks of every summer in her grandparent's house on Cape Cod. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, and others.

Erin Celello is the author of Miracle Beach and Learning to Stay. She was born and raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she also earned an MFA in fiction from Northern Michigan University. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, two young sons, and two unruly Vizslas. She teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.