Product Description
Booklist said it well: "Dorn is probably the late twentieth century's finest chronicler of what he calls 'contemporary horse culture.' His subject is always the real West: not the West Coast, not Seattle, San Francisco, and L.A., but 'real towns' such as Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Laramie, Wyoming, and Ryegate, Montana. ('Real towns,' Dorn says, 'don't have parking meters.') We're talking the Big Open. The Big Empty."

This hefty book a collection of thirty years' worth of occasional poems and prose features a generous selection from Dorn's hard-to-find short fiction, stories populated with the working poor and the dispossessed drifters, searchers, fugitives, Native Americans, and itinerant trailer-park families. It also includes the book-length poem "Recollections of Gran Apachería" (1974), a sad, polemical, spiritual meditation on Geronimo, the Apaches, and their annihilation at the hands of European descendants. A third of the book consists of inflammatory essays, Gonzo travelogues, and idiosyncratic cultural analyses, and these, especially, find Dorn in fine form: witty, perverse, cantankerous, shocking, always writing well, and absolutely unable to tolerate any degree of cant. ... Read more

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19 poems to honor the "Scald". ... Read more

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On a June day, a young woman in a summer dress steps off a Chicago-bound bus into a small midwestern town. She doesn't intend to stay. She is just passing through. Yet her stopping here has a reason and it is part of a story that you will never forget.

The time is the 1950s, when life was simpler, people still believed in dreams, and family was, very nearly, everything. The place is a small midwestern town with a high school and a downtown, a skating pond and a movie house. And on a tree-lined street in the heartland of America, an extraordinary set of events begins to unfold. And gradually what seems serendipitous is tinged with purpose. A happy home is shattered by a child's senseless death. A loving marriage starts to unravel. And a stranger arrives a young woman who will touch many lives before she moves on. She and a young man will meet and fall in love. Their love, so innocent and full of hope, helps to restore a family's dreams. And all of their lives will be changed forever by the precious gift she leaves them.

The Gift, Danielle Steel's thirty-third best-selling work, is a magical story told with stunning simplicity and power. It reveals a relationship so moving it will take your breath away. And it tells a haunting and beautiful truth about the unpredictability and the wonder of life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (87)

The first one that I read
This was the first of her books that I read. I love it so much that I went back to the library and checked out more of her books.

The Gift
Set in 1950's America this book starts with the death of 5 year old Anne, the day after Christmas. This death comes close to tearing her family apart.

16 year old Maribeth Robertson comes from a very strict family. So when she gets pregnant and her brother finds out he tells her father who sends her away to have the baby to a convant. He tells her not to come home or contact her mother or sister until she's had and got rid of her baby.

When she arrives at the convent she hates it so much she runs away using the money her father gave her to pay the nuns. She becomes a waitress, this is where she meets Tommy, Anne's older brother.

I enjoyed this book, its worth a read.

Sappy and Unreal
This is the first Danielle Steel book I've read and the last.The whole premise was unreal.These people were 16 years old, for heaven's sake, and Steel made them so mature as to be unbelievable.It was sappy.The ending was so unsatisfactory I have to wonder:Is there a sequel?If there is, I won't be reading it.

Wouldn't recommend it
I'm a big Danielle Steel fan, but this book was way too predictable and I must admit, was a little boring... I give it 2 stars just because I'm a big fan.

Grinnell IS in Iowa!
This is the first Danielle Steel book I have read, and it will be the last.Aside from the sappy, predictable story and elementary use of the language, the book contains (for me, at least) an egregious editorial mistake - Tommy thinking about Maribeth, page 158 of the paperback: "But there was something he didn't like to think about, her going back to Iowa and her parents." This would be the same Maribeth who took a bus from Onawa, Iowa to Omaha, Nebraska, then got off in Grinnell on the way to Chicago.The only Grinnell, with a college, on the way to Chicago from Omaha, happens to be the one in IOWA!!

I suppose, to some people, this is a small point.However, in my opinion, if you're going to write fiction, make it up.Don't screw it up.

And by the way, Grinnell is a very cool town.





... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Edward (Merton) Dorn, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2201 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author