Molly Gloss is the author of the novels The Jump-Off Creek, The Dazzle of Day, Wild Life, The Hearts of Horses, and Falling From Horses, as well as the story collection Unforeseen. She writes both realistic fiction and science fiction, and has received, among other honors, a PEN West Fiction Prize, an Oregon Book Award, two Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and a Whiting Award in Fiction. A fourth-generation Oregonian, she lives in Portland.
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The Jump-Off CreekA Novel
Every thing I own save the poor Beasts is in a heap here in the center of this room and if I mean to keep it whole I must before I sleep cover all against the leaking, rake old tins & leavings outside the door, burn a camphor stick against vermin, set my few mouse traps along the walls. And hope for better Weather & Strength in the days coming. I have put out in the night the 2 boys I found here, they had taken up living in the empty house. Those were Troubles I could not borrow, as I am scarce likely to make my own living in this poor place and coming West I have seen idle men Everywhere abut in La Grande and Boise and Missoula and in the Papers woeful news of the falling price of Wheat & Cattle both. They were polite & forebearing, for which reason I am sorry.
The Jump-Off Creek:A Novel -
The Jump-Off CreekA Novel
She went a little way along the edge of the line of brush, up the steep hill toward the trees. She held the gun in both hands, shaking, putting her bare feet down with care. She had had the gun from her mother’s brother when she was thirteen. She had killed a lot of things with it, snakes and sage hens and hares. Once a coyote. It had been a good gun once, a handmade L.B. Settlemeier with an engraving of pheasants on the breech. But it had been used badly before her uncle got it, the mahogany stock gouged in a couple of places and the finish worn off, the barrel pitted from poor storage. Sometimes now the hammer stuck. She doubted it could kill anything of size—almost certainly not all at once.
The Jump-Off Creek:A Novel -
The Jump-Off CreekA Novel
They played euchre and five-card, betting with matches. Generally Jack could win two out of three at euchre—he had taught it to the kid without teaching him any of its secrets—but Harley kept even on the poker. They traded matches back and forth and neither of them ever went bust. They played outside, sitting on the grass under a tree when it was hot. When it rained they played inside on a blanket spread out on the dirt floor. It was what they mainly did. It was how Jack remembered it afterward—that summer he spent with Harley Osgood, playing for matches and waiting for neither of them knew what.
The Jump-Off Creek:A Novel
" . . . there isn't a false move in this poignant novel, which demonstrates as much insight into the hearts of men and women as into the hearts of horses. Books like this are easy to overlook, but there's someone on your holiday list who will feel blessed by Gloss's gentle story." —Ron Charles, The Washington Post [on The Hearts of Horses]
“Gloss twines just enough intellectual fiber around the sleek cord of a great adventure story to offer up a truly satisfying read . . . the writing is gorgeous, the characters real and vivid, and the story transforming.” —Publishers Weekly [on Wild Life]
"Sometimes it seems that literature is an excellent medium for measuring intimacy; sometimes the white space and the black letters seem to gleefully record the distances between us. The Jump-Off Creek, written by Molly Gloss in 1989 and reissued by Mariner, is about a woman, Lydia Sanderson, who homesteads alone in Washington state. The book is a prism of loneliness in the form of a novel." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
Selected Works
