Mike Shea on the month’s new releases

Rick Bass

Why I Came West

Houghton Mifflin

Over the course of two decades living in Montana’s remote Yaak Valley, Houston-bred Rick Bass has produced 21 books—largely about the wilderness that surrounds him—and acquired a reputation as a zealous, not to say rabid, environmental activist. Why I Came West is his attempt to redefine himself as a writer and family man relative to his all-consuming crusade to gain a “permanent wilderness designation” for areas of the Yaak and protect them from road building and uncontrolled logging. Bass might have done well to crib his work’s title from chapter 10, wherein he dubs himself “the most hated man in the largest county in the United States,” a distinction earned from his conflicts with logging companies, neighbors, and the government as a founder of the Yaak Valley Forest Council. And though not given to self-pity, he pours his heart out with palpable relief over the threats, attacks, and bureaucratic wrangling that have monopolized years of his time. He is clearly ready to pass the baton to younger hands and return to the only calling he ever wanted—writing fiction. Why I Came West could have been a tree hugger’s angry polemic, but Bass has produced a complex portrait of one man standing at the crossroads where poetry and wilderness intersect with commerce and civilization. Houghton Mifflin, $24

Joe R. Lansdale

Leather Maiden

Knopf

Life is kicking Pulitzer-nominated journalist Cason Statler squarely in the pants at the outset of Joe R. Lansdale’s potent seriocomic thriller Leather Maiden. Fired by his editor at a Houston paper for personal reasons (“I was banging his wife. And his stepdaughter”), Statler retreats to his hometown of Camp Rapture, Texas, where he sets about drinking to excess; stalking his ex-girlfriend, Gabby; and writing a column for the local daily—in roughly that order. Dredging his predecessor’s desk for ideas, Statler uncovers some notes about Caroline Allison, an attractive coed who vanished without a trace six months earlier. He turns the material into a great column, but his satisfaction sours when a DVD surfaces showing the missing history student and one Professor Jimmy Statler (yes, his brother) assuming rather unscholarly postures. The reporter presses on, not sure if his investigation will reveal his sib to be a kidnapper or worse. Lansdale has created a classic character in Cason, his most irascible, wisecracking protagonist since amateur sleuths Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. And though his patented affinity for the bizarre is on display (think human taxidermy), it’s the combination of back-porch storytelling and breakneck suspense that makes Leather Maiden a must-read for thriller fans. Knopf, $23.95

Nick Flynn

Nick Flynn
Photograph by Matt Valentine

The play Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins represents a chance for the award-winning poet and memoirist (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) to “work a muscle [he] hadn’t before.” He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

Is Alice your first play?

In my memoir there are fragments of writing that look like plays. It’s interesting to build whole worlds out of what people say and to line that up against what they are doing, which can create another level of tension, especially if the two don’t line up perfectly.

What have you learned from the directors and actors who have staged it?

One thing I’ve learned is that actors want to know the backstory to a character. There’s a guy in Alice named Ivan, and it is unclear whether he is a businessman or homeless, and the actor really needed to know. The problem was, I didn’t know, and still don’t—he’s a slippery character.

What projects are on your desk at the moment?

I’m finishing a hybrid memoir based on the reaction in America, and in myself, to the release of the Abu Ghraib photos. Part of it involved meeting with the ex-detainees portrayed in the now infamous photographs. That was eye-opening. Right now the title is “The Ticking Is the Bomb.” Faber & Faber, $13

(Read the full interview.)