As Good as Gone

April 18, 2016
This excellent family drama from Watson (Let Him Go) centers on Calvin Sidey and his second chance to be a part of his family. Decades ago, Calvin abandoned his son and daughter when his beloved wife, Pauline, died while visiting her native France. Since then, he’s lived in the scrublands of Montana, doing the occasional odd job and reading his father’s copy of Catullus. But in the heat of 1963’s summer, his son, David, has come calling, asking Calvin to watch over David’s children while David takes his wife, Marjorie, to Missoula for an operation. Calvin’s granddaughter, Ann, is 17, but she has a steady job and therefore can’t keep an eye on Calvin’s grandson, 11-year-old Will. Calvin receives unlooked-for support and physical comfort from Beverly Lodge, a neighbor, but even she can see that he “is always ready to run, and it doesn’t take much to set him in motion.” The challenges of his family may redeem Calvin or break him for good. This is a very well done novel in which every character faces an individual conflict, resulting in a rich, suspenseful read. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Associates.

April 1, 2016
Bill Sidey wants someone he knows well to watch his kids while his wife has surgery, and so he looks up a rank old cowboy, Calvin Sidey, who happens to be the father who virtually abandoned him when he was a boy. Done with school, Calvin signed on as a ranch hand instead of joining the family real estate business in Gladstone, Montana. There, Sidey was "a name that connoted power and influence." Calvin later fought in the trenches of World War I. Then he came home with a French bride and took to the family's business. After his wife died during a vacation, Calvin went first to the bottle and then back to the cowboy life. Son Bill and daughter Jeanette, not yet adults, were left behind, seeing Calvin rarely. Now in the 1960s, Bill runs the family business, but with his wife, Marjorie, facing serious surgery in far-off Missoula, there's no one to watch over 17-year-old Ann and her younger brother, Will. Motivation here, as with Calvin's earlier abandonment, seems amorphous and must be intuited by the reader, but Watson (Let Him Go, 2013, etc.) deepens the story with secondary characters and spare, clear, Hemingway-esque prose. Notable is the Sideys' neighbor, retired teacher Beverly Lodge, who falls in love with Calvin. Then there's Bill's wife, Marjorie. She had a wild teen romance with a cowboy, perhaps the root of her distrust of free-spirited Calvin. Finally, there's Lonnie Black Pipe, Bill's promising classmate-turned-scarred barroom brawler. Character conflict draws blood when Calvin's Old West code compels him to intervene when preteen Will becomes entangled with a group of rowdy boys and Ann's stalked by a violent Gladstone newcomer. The latter confrontation, with Calvin's "capacity for ferocity," deserves a Clint Eastwood performance. Watson's powerful characterizations frame large and connected themes: family loyalty, the conflicting capacities of love, and the tenuous connections between humans.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from April 15, 2016
From Montana 1948 (1993) through Let Him Go (2003), Watson has written rich, sometimes heartbreaking novels, often set in the middle of the twentieth century and featuring resolute men and women whose very strength of characterthe product, to some extent, of contending with the forbidding if starkly beautiful landscapes of the American mountain stateshas left them ill-equipped to deal with emotional turmoil. So it is for Calvin Sidey, once a successful real-estate developer in small-town Montana, but for years, following the accidental death of his wife, a virtual recluse, living far off the grid and out of touch with his son, Bill, and two grandchildren. Then a health crisis prompts Bill to ask his father to stay with the children, teenage Ann and 11-year-old Will, while Bill takes his wife to Missoula for surgery. Calvin reluctantly agrees and finds himself thrown into the maelstrom of the 1960s and the troubled lives of the two kids (Will is being bullied, and Ann is being stalked by an ex-boyfriend who won't accept no for an answer). In Hollywood, Calvin's attempts to solve his grandchildren's problems like a cowboy confronting a gang of rustlers would be the stuff of inspirational melodrama, but in Watson's far more subtle hands, the novel becomes something else entirely. Calvin is trapped on a cultural and emotional fault line, the ground shifting beneath him as he realizes that the only tools he knows how to use won't unlock the secrets to life in a new world. Yes, Watson has told versions of this story before but perhaps never with as powerful a sense of loss. Fine writing in the grand western tradition of William Kittredge and Mark Spragg.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

Starred review from May 15, 2016

Watson's stunning novel of the Sidey family is set in the turbulent Sixties in the prairie town of Gladstone, MT. Crusty old Calvin lives off the grid outside of town, staying away from anyone who might remember his mix-up with the law. Calvin's son Bill runs the family real-estate business. Despite their precarious relationship, Bill screws up the courage to ask Calvin to stay at the house with daughter, Ann, and son, Will, while Bill and his wife, Marjorie, head to Missoula for Marjorie's surgery. Calvin arrives with a small suitcase, a pint of Canadian Club whiskey, a box of ammunition, and a Colt .45. He can't help but apply his code-of-the-West justice when one of Bill's renters reacts to an eviction notice by storming the house with threats, or when Ann is being stalked by an aggressive boyfriend with whom she wants nothing. Even a romantic liaison with a widowed neighbor doesn't soften Calvin. He's a relic who doesn't fit in. He walks out, returning to his solitary life, little realizing the significant effect he had on those around him. VERDICT Having received numerous awards for his fiction, Watson (Montana 1948) is sure to win more praise for his powerful characterizations in the manner of Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. Readers won't get a novel any better than this. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/15.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016

Watson proved himself with the wonderful Montana 1948, a Milkweed National Fiction Prize winner that has sold 600,000 copies; he's since won awards from places like the Mountain and Plains Library Association and the New York Public Library. In his tenth novel, set in the 1960s, tough-as-rawhide old cowboy Calvin Sidey has absented himself from society but agrees to tend his grandchildren for a week. Soon, he's running interference--and then some--when a beau gets too forward with 17-year-old Ann and bad-boy types hassle 11-year-old Will.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2016

Watson's stunning novel of the Sidey family is set in the turbulent Sixties in the prairie town of Gladstone, MT. Crusty old Calvin lives off the grid outside of town, staying away from anyone who might remember his mix-up with the law. Calvin's son Bill runs the family real-estate business. Despite their precarious relationship, Bill screws up the courage to ask Calvin to stay at the house with daughter, Ann, and son, Will, while Bill and his wife, Marjorie, head to Missoula for Marjorie's surgery. Calvin arrives with a small suitcase, a pint of Canadian Club whiskey, a box of ammunition, and a Colt .45. He can't help but apply his code-of-the-West justice when one of Bill's renters reacts to an eviction notice by storming the house with threats, or when Ann is being stalked by an aggressive boyfriend with whom she wants nothing. Even a romantic liaison with a widowed neighbor doesn't soften Calvin. He's a relic who doesn't fit in. He walks out, returning to his solitary life, little realizing the significant effect he had on those around him. VERDICT Having received numerous awards for his fiction, Watson (Montana 1948) is sure to win more praise for his powerful characterizations in the manner of Kent Haruf and Ivan Doig. Readers won't get a novel any better than this. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/15.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.