Description
Book SynopsisThis title is a collection of sketches, merging nonfiction and myth. Working within the oral tradition it follows a detailed history of the sheep industry in historic California with lyrical allegoric vignettes about sheep management, shearing, weather sense, and grazing the Sierra.
Trade Review"'My sheep book,' Austin called it. Like her other early works - especially The Land of Little Rain, Lost Borders, and Isidro - The Flock explores the interrelationships between landscape and human culture through the portrayal of a particular aspect of Western society. It also represents Austin's effort to rethink and revise the age-old pastoral tradition in an American setting....The Flock is not about Austin, and yet we have such a strong sense of personal presence, in her voice and style, that we are made to think about the way a mind comes to understand and be changed by listening to the stories of 'others' and retelling them. The reader is jolted from a position of passive reception of information into an awareness of the ambiguous creation of meaning." - Melody Graulich, editor of Exploring Lost Borders: Critical Essays on Mary Austin"
