Dana Hand to Appear at The Iles House

Deep Creek authors Dana Hand (Will Howarth and Anne Matthews) will discuss history and fiction at a fireside chat at The Elijah Iles House on Wednesday, June 8 at 7:30 PM.

Will Howarth is a longtime volunteer for the Iles House, serving as the original editor of this blog. A Springfield native, Will is an authority on the history and literature of travel, places, and nature. He served as editor-in-chief of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, chaired The Center for American Places and, in over forty years at Princeton University, explored nature-culture conflicts in courses ranging from pre-colonial America to postmodern fiction.

As historian and critic, he specializes in trans-Atlantic romanticism, literary nonfiction, and the environmental humanities. As free-lance writer, he has covered assignments for many national periodicals. He first learned of the events at Deep Creek in 1981, while on assignment in Idaho for National Geographic.

Anne Matthews writes about American places facing sudden and often unwanted change. Where the Buffalo Roam, on the depopulating Great Plains, was a Pulitzer finalist in nonfiction. Bright College Years, a New York Times Notable Book, examines the American campus. Wild Nights: Nature Returns to the City describes the wilding of urban spaces and was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. She served on the Library of America editorial board for the two-volume collection, Reporting World War II. A contributing editor for American Scholar and Preservation, she has lectured and taught at Princeton, Columbia, and New York University.

Deep Creek has been distinguished among the best novels of 2010 by The Washington Post. Download it to your Kindle or order a hard copy for your library.

...the characters, among the most courageous and

original to be found in Western fiction, don’t reveal

their secrets until they’re good and ready.

— Sarah Johnson, editor, Historical Novels Review

Dramatically, even lyrically...the authors elegantly

weave an engaging, thrilling, lively narrative... A

splendid read.

— William Wong, San Francisco Chronicle

Astonishingly effective...a gripping, spooky historical

novel, based on true events, told in a way that closely

resembles real life, full of the unknown and unknowable....

— Carolyn See, Washington Post

The best piece of Old West historical fiction I've seen

since Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose. It deftly . . .

tells a compelling story of people wrestling with the

dark and tragic side of the frontier.

— Donald Worster, author of Under Western Skies