The Meadow

By: James Galvin

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

In short vignettes, Galvin gives us a deeply personal portrait of the people who lived in a mountain meadow along the Colorado-Wyoming border over its hundred-year history. His portraits illuminate the Western character and evolve a sense of place like no other.©1992 James Galvin

Critic reviews

"These ragged sketches of ranch life along the Wyoming-Colorado border depict Galvin's neighbors--hardscrabble folk--in wry, stoic stories of skill, survival and loss that flash back and forth across 100 years of the high meadow's history - there is spare beauty here, and readers of Richard Ford, Jim Harrison and Rick Bass will feel at home in Galvin's country." (Publishers Weekly)

beautiful, poetic, odd audio mixing sometimes

incredible story of place and the people who land on it for a time. this was my first audiobook and I was jarred sometimes by.what sounding like strange mixing/recording of the narrator. some passages would sound suddenly louder and be read in a voice that sounded quite different from the rest of the book. this wasn't a specific character or to mark special passages, just a splice of a harsh recording to my ear.

when that wasn't happening I thought the narrator did a great job with this tale and these gruff characters.

A vanishing way of life

Captured in amber. Rarely does one hear an author that knows of what he speaks to this extent.

Excellent prose

Funny and heartfelt characters and their stories about surviving in a wilderness where the wind blows fierce and water is not easy to come by.

Humans and our place in/of nature

I absolutely love this book, it makes me feel sad and mortal but full full full.

Reading the Meadow is almost like reading a poem..

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I will recommend this book to anyone who has a love of nature and of the history of the settlement of America. My passion is hiking and exploration and I often think to myself that it would be exquisite to somehow be able to time travel at a waterfall or mountaintop to see the events that have taken place over time. The Meadow transports us back in time to the events that have shaped the American west and so vividly recreates the sense of wonder that humans must have felt while in those wild environs.

What did you like best about this story?

I love the clarity of the characters and the overriding theme of man in nature. Most of all I love that the characters do not place blame for their struggles in life. It is a beautiful allegory of the soul moving towards higher consciousness through interaction with natural elements and each other. At one point the main character says that he should never have expanded his home in the meadow as he ended up there alone with no need for all the extra room...it was an insightful comment which we all ask ourselves at some time in our lives...did we really improve anything through our lifelong struggles? The answer, of course, is that the journey was the important element not the end result.

What about Patrick Lawlor’s performance did you like?

His voice is light and confident.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

The Meadow

Memories

A perfect depiction of the area. Narrative is authentically southern Wyoming between Laramie and Ft. Collins.