No More Giants

Book excerpt: A gripping story of a young woman growing up in the harsh setting of a Nevada ranch in the 1940s. No More Giants combines a deep love for the land with a bracingly honest view of family conflicts and the loss of dreams. Jenny struggles to survive and escape from the frustrations and hatred of her parents, recounting the hardships and joys of life in a stark and unforgiving landscape. Raised on Nevada ranch herself, Joaquina Ballard Howles portrays this way of life and its people with keen perception and powerful authenticity. Reminiscent of the work of Joan Didion and Sylvia Plath, Howles’s prose pierces the myths of the American cowboy with a sharp feminist sensibility and reveals the bleakness, the violence, and the beauty of life in the remote high desert country. Ignored when first published, No More Giants is now recognized as a classic work about women in the American West. Introduction by PEN/Jerard Fund and Willa Award winner Judy Blunt, author of Breaking Clean. No More Giants continues the mission of Recovered Books series to rescue exceptional books long unavailable to today’s readers.