Novel Idea

A A A Comments By Naomi Zeveloff Thursday, Aug 23 2007

Although Teague Bohlen's book The Pull of the Earth is set in Illinois, the backcloth of the story might as well be rural Colorado. The novel, which is up for a Colorado Book Award, invokes the universality of the small town where a father and son contend with commitment to land and family.

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"If you have ever driven I-70 out east, the landscape doesn't change that much," says Bohlen. "Once you get on the eastern plains, you can go straight through to Illinois and beyond. It is very similar."

While few Book Award finalists deal directly with Colorado in their stories, Bohlen's not the only writer who says the state seeps into his work. Take Patrice St. Onge, for example, whose book Threads details the story of one woman's life as told by those who molded and shaped her persona. Each of these individuals, or threads, has a corresponding color — and by novel's end, they weave a narrative tapestry.

"I do take inspiration from the landscape," says St. Onge. "I happen to live right at the base of the Colorado National Monument in Grand Junction. Every morning I wake up and I'm amazed I get to see that every day."

Finalists hail from around the state, and a large chunk of their work was published through Denver's Ghost Road Press. Tonight at 7:30 p.m., St. Onge and Bohlen will join fellow fiction nominees for a Fiction Writer Finalists reading at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street.

Award winners will be announced in October.
Sun., Aug. 24, 7:30 p.m., 2008

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