Easy Keeper - Hardcover

Literature ``lite'' from Tannen (Second Sight, 1988; After Roy, 1989), who writes stylishly about the angst of the superficially substantial in the kind of western setting easterners like to think authentic. Priest Creek, an old mountain town neither pretty nor glitzy, is a place to which people come from elsewhere ``because they have this fantasy about the West.'' There are recently widowed Lily, who rears sheep on her ranch and finds solace ``in the power of life and death and procreation''; Dusty, in love with Lily, is the dreamy, overly imaginative town-chronicler; and Dixie, who came from the South with her menagerie of pets because she wanted to live ``in a log cabin on a country road.'' In the year that follows the death of her drug-addicted husband, Lily falls in love with visiting Foster, a New Yorker, who thinks that Lily could be easy to love, an ``easy keeper'' (an animal that produces more feed for less feed). But Lily needs something more permanent; and though Foster comes back for occasional visits, he is too much the city boy, lacking ``the faith finally to buy into the dream'' and settle down with Lily and her down-to-earth friends. As the year passes, Dixie comes closer to attaining her dream; Dusty, who's been busy crafting a history for the town at the behest of its leading developer, saves Lily from death; and in a carefully orchestrated set-piece in which the visitors from out-of-town see an even more dramatic Old West than they had bargained for, Dusty wins Lily. Together now, ``they're living a dream in a small place high in the mountains where a person could begin again, restored at last to a harmony with nature.'' Much beautiful writing, but the characters have about as much authenticity as the local legends Dusty crafts to attract investors. Pleasant but not memorable. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An old Colorado town about to succumb to the ersatz taste of Eastern developers is the setting for Tannen's gracefully written, sometimes beguiling but patently overstructured contemporary western romance. Recent widow Lily efficiently runs her sheep ranch, often with the unobtrusive help of her friend, town historian Dusty, who has loved her for years in silence. Impulsive, flaky Dixie comes to Priest Creek to find the modern version of the pulp westerns she compulsively reads; swaggering cowboy Shane doesn't know what has hit him when she moves into his trailer. Each of these nicely delineated characters is emotionally adrift, searching for the next chapter in his or her life story. Enter Foster, an effete outsider from New York, where he writes and sings commercial jingles and makes a lot of money. Though his charm is never apparent to the reader, Foster elicits passion in normally reticent, independent Lily--and a closemouthed despair in reliable Dusty. Foster thinks of Lily in terms of an easy keeper (an animal that needs less feed than the amount of food it produces), but Lily turns out to have instincts he cannot appreciate. Tannen's ( After Roy) prose is lean, ironic and often arresting. But she sets up the love triangle too broadly, making Foster so wimpy and clumsy that Lily's eventual decision is never in doubt. Even so, this is a satisfying story that will win an audience.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.