The Great Mormon Cricket Fly-fishing Festival and Other Western Stories

Book excerpt: Tom Bishop's collection of stories is divided into slices of time and takes place in the northern Rocky Mountains. The earliest story is set during a brutal winter in which the men of a Lakota clan follow a vision of an elk herd to find meat to save their starving family. The next group of tales take place one hundred years later, in the early twentieth century. A country storekeeper uses defanged rattlesnakes to guard his business; dealings with a bootlegger cost a man his friends, his home, and his job; and deer hunters at the height of the Great Depression go out in search of "Hoover Steaks." At the end of World War II, an illegal quail hunt costs the host rancher over a thousand dollars when a hunter is killed and his widow demands restitution. In "The Fragile Commandment" an abusive farmer is killed by his stepdaughter with a pitchfork, and "Someone's Dog" is the story of a trout fisherman who finds a dog by his favorite stream. The title story, "The Great Mormon Cricket Fly-Fishing Festival" involves trout fisherman who want to bring in enough money through their festival to pay for a weekend fishing party. Regardless of the time period, the people, situations, dilemmas, and problems found in these stories replicate those of the twenty-first century.