Tributary

Willa Cather and Sandra Dallas resonate in Barbara K. Richardson's fearless portrait of 1870s Mormon Utah. This smart and lively novel tracks the extraordinary life of one woman who dares resist communal salvation in order to find her own. Clair Martin's dauntless search for self leads her from the domination of Mormon polygamy to the chaos of Reconstruction Dixie and back to Utah where she learns from Shoshone Indian ways how to take her place, at last, in the land she loves.

Barbara K. Richardson's debut novel Guest House was an Eric Hoffer Award fiction finalist. She lives and writes in Boulder, Colorado.

?A quest to belong is the theme of this novel from Richardson, whose lyrical prose and heartfelt characters shine through. This novel has much to offer, including a balanced perspective on a controversial time in Mormon history, but its greatest gift is its wisdom about finding one�� own path.��BR>?Publishers Weekly

?You��l love resolute Clair Martin, the equal of any man?or religion. Clair�� strength and survival are the heritage of western women.��
?Sandra Dallas, author of True Sisters.

"Tributary is a remarkable odyssey of the American West, told in one of the most clear-sighted, unjudging, and original voices I've come across in years."
?Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek and The Hearts of Horses

?Richardson, whose Mormon ancestors settled in the northern Salt Lake Valley, offers a complete portrait of life in the American West by exploring the struggles of a woman living outside the centers of power. Engaging and beautifully written, Tributary is a welcome addition to the current conversation.��BR>?5280 Magazine

"Tributary is a novel whose characters and time are so well inhabited, whose landscapes are so lovingly evoked, we wonder if Richardson is not speaking to us directly from the late 19th century, from a high bench above the Great Salt Lake. The language and writing are surefooted and fresh and often startling the way the best poetry can be startling. Richardson is a new American voice worth listening to.��
?Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars and Kook

?Seldom does a novel come along that is as beautifully written and emotionally honest as Tributary. Barbara K. Richardson captures the grandeur and harshness of the Old West in a young woman�� struggle to find a home and a family without losing herself. A lyrical and haunting story not to be missed.��
?Margaret Coel, Author of Buffalo Bill�� Dead Now

?From polygamist Mormon desert settlements to the yellow fever-plagued Gulf to an Idaho sheep ranch, Richardson evokes the 19th Century West and the human heart in all their complexity."
?Barbara Wright, author of the Spur Award-winning novel Plain Language

"This is a gorgeous novel. This book does what art should do, which is to show us our lives with renewed clarity and better insight. Tributary takes the incomplete history and mythos of the West to task, and instead shows us some of the far more interesting and unexplored stories of the American West?Mormonism, racism, women who don�� need marriage or men. Beautifully written and engaging, this is a story of one woman and her refusal to cave into societal norms in order to seek her own difficult and inspired path."
?Laura Pritchett, author of Sky Bridge

?I've been hungering for a book like this since I finished Lonesome Dove?a tale of the Old West big enough to crawl into completely, full of magnetic characters, unspeakable dangers, and beautiful language.��
?Lisa Jones, author of Broken: A Love Story