This is not your usual memoir, but it is for the most part a fantastic book.
I am not the audience for whom this book was written. I am not a woman, I haven’t suffered any debilitating tragic event, I don’t share her views on most aspects of “climate change “ or her environmentalist alarm, nor do I stress if I am doing enough for and sacrificing enough to justify my actions on a whole host of fronts, But I have lived in Colorado- where the majority of the book takes place, for 45 years, and and I appreciate a talented writer, and I also love and get along with, and have more faith in animals than I do most people.
This book is phenomenal! It makes you see there is good in the world. The book is so good and so relatable and the author is so genuine I wanted to call her up and meet for a beer in the little town of Creede Colorado where is lives.
Do yourself a favor and read Deep Creek, you will feel better after you read it. ( )

I love Pam Houston's writing and this is my favorite book of hers. This book has so many pieces to it, part memoir, part adventure, part animal, part nature - loved it all!
This book is a keeper, I want it on my bookshelf so I can pick it up from time to time and read her moving passages whether they be on the beauty of the natural world, the bond with her animals, or the perspectives she has gained through her life experiences.
This book is right up there with Ann Patchett's These Precious Days which is also on my bookshelf! ( )

"On her 120-acre homestead in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what is 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. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep. Houston finds her sanctuary a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her.

"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.' "
~~back cover

I loved this book. I felt as though I were there, on the homestead, living the life she talked about -- breathing the mountain air, sobbing uncontrollably when Fenton died, breathing smoke and fear when the West Fork Complex fire burned nearer & nearer to the homestead. The fire resonated with me since I've spent time working for the Forest Service and dealing with campaign fires.

But most of all I loved reading about the world around her -- its beauty, its fierceness, its changing seasons. I want to liver up there, high in the Rockies, living "simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief ... to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive." ( )

Houston's love of the natural world is palpable on every page and her gifts for both observation and words make her a western writer of immense value. The most beautiful lessons on wildfire and trust I've ever read. ( )

I happen to be traveling through the high country at present, so this book has an extra impact. It’s a bit rambling — more of a collection of essays than a strict narrative, but I find it transporting, meditative, riveting. There are parts that I find deeply troubling — I am fortunate not to have known childhood abuse, but Houston’s absolute candor and straightforward message of how she went about survival is a thing of great beauty.

The work makes me think of glass — hardship, tempered by fire, to become something new, and transparent, and hopeful. That’s an oversimplification, as no hope in the book is without a corresponding acknowledgement of struggle and of loss. Eh, I’m writing in circles. This is both a manual for survival and a love letter to the earth. May she survive as well.

Advanced Readers Copy provided by Edelweiss. ( )