Rightful Place (Voice in the American West)

"I have been in love with the working ranch cowboy for my whole life. As a girl, I sat beside my dad in coffee shops and feed stores, listening to livestock men cuss the weather, examine cattle prices, and make deals. I held the halter rope while he shod the remudas of large ranches as well as reset the shoes on people's family pets. I begged to go when he trotted off into desert mornings with crews of men on horseback. And I dreamed of living on a cow camp, of the kind of ranch romance that Texas rancher Tom Moorhouse talks about with his drawling, twanging long a sounds." --from the author's prefaceFrom the Texas panhandle to the mountains of Arizona, Amy Auker has lived the cowboy life--as wife, as mother, as cook, as ranch hand, as writer. In fine-grained detail she captures the prairie light, the traffic on small farm-to-market roads, the vacant stillness of shipping pens when fall works are over. But she also captures the unmistakable westernness of the people and creatures around her: the son who must get back on the horse that just bucked him off, the husband who gives great gifts, the animals whose names and temperaments are as recognizable as family. Auker understands those who live in the sway of nature's moods far off the main roads, and she commends them to us in luminous prose backlit by her own hard-earned experience.

Literature & Fiction

Auker, Amy Hale

Essays & Correspondence

Texas Tech University Press

From the Texas panhandle to the mountains of Arizona, Amy Auker has lived the cowboy life―as wife, as mother, as cook, as ranch hand, as writer. In fine-grained detail she captures the prairie light, the traffic on small farm-to-market roads, the vacant stillness of shipping pens when fall works are over. But she also captures the unmistakable westernness of the people and animals around her: the son who must get back on the horse, the husband who gives great gifts, the horses whose names and temperaments are as recognizable as family. Auker understands those who live in the sway of nature’s moods far off the main roads, and she commends them to us in luminous prose backlit by her own hard-earned experience.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

The winter Bride wears diamonds. To those down below, she appears to be sleeping, locked inside a chastity belt of cold. She naps lightly behind the veil of ice and snow, letting it shield her from the sun and throw it back into the sky. But her chill is only skin deep. Inside her hidden folds and caves and recesses, the heartbeat of her lives and breathes and curls around the seeds of what willbe. The winter Bride is pregnant, gestating the future, smiling quietly at the snores of the bears and the mountain lions, allowing all of the fertile places to swell and burgeon with the life that is to come. The winter Bride is holding a flood in deposit for the sun's withdrawal in spring. This is the canvas on which Amy Hale Auker paints the lives of her characters. Shiney, the ranch owner; Monte, the foreman; Rafe, the old hand; Jody, the new hand; Blake and Brenna, who can't seem to grow up even though they have a houseful of children. These, and many more, are waiting to show you how they live, love, work, and play in the shadow of the Bride. Auker’s writing is extraordinary, as evidenced by these reviews of her award-winning Rightful Place: “Her focus is sharp and discerning, intimate and clear – so refreshing that her writing transcends the contemporary cattle-culture and her harsh Texas landscape to become a template for creating a richer life.” John Dofflemyer, author of Poems from Dry Creek “Auker is fiercely connected – and will connect you as well – with the most elemental spirits of the earth and the heart.” Margo Metegrano, Director of The Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry Winter of Beauty is a novel by Amy Hale Auker, winner of the 2012 WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, which will bring joy to your heart and tears to your eyes. Her words come from the heart and will melt you, just like the sun melts the snow on Bride Mountain. A working cowgirl, Auker writes and thrives on a ranch in Arizona where she is having a love affair with rock, mountains, piñon and juniper forests, the weather, and her songwriter husband, who is foreman of the ranch. As Amy says, “For years I cooked for cowboys, cleaned up after cowboys, listened to cowboys tell stories, but for the past five years I have done my own time in the saddle. And I write. Always I write.” She guides her readers to a place where the bats fly, lizards do pushups on the rocks, bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt. Where hummingbirds do rain dances in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon. Winter of Beauty will please the adult reader who enjoys the apt description of people and things; the understanding of nature, human or otherwise; and becoming immersed in them through a turn of phrase that brings both clarity of thought and joy in the reading.

Winter of Beauty

Literary

Pen-L Publishing

Amy Hale Auker's first book of essays, Rightful Place, was the story of a woman finding beauty in her place, the Llano Estacado. Her new collection of creative non-fiction, Ordinary Skin, explores her mid-life transition with prose poems and essays that illustrate a new terrain as well as new ways of being in the world. Touching on faith and body image and belonging, these essays explore our role in deciding what is favorable or unfavorable, as well as where we some day want to dwell, and who came before us. In that touching, they feel their way with observations about current affairs, drought, mystery, and the hard decisions that face us all as we continue to move toward more questions with fewer answers. This exploration is informed and softened by hummingbirds, Gila monsters,bats, foxes, bears, wildflowers, and hidden seep springs where life goes on whether we are there to see it or not. It is about work in a wild and wilderness environment. In the end, even as life changes drastically around us, we are better off for knowing that the ugly mud bug turns into a jewel-toned dragonfly.

Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs (Voice in the American West)

The winter Bride wears diamonds. To those down below, she appears to be sleeping, locked inside a chastity belt of cold. She naps lightly behind the veil of ice and snow, letting it shield her from the sun and throw it back into the sky. But her chill is only skin deep. Inside her hidden folds and caves and recesses, the heartbeat of her lives and breathes and curls around the seeds of what willbe. The winter Bride is pregnant, gestating the future, smiling quietly at the snores of the bears and the mountain lions, allowing all of the fertile places to swell and burgeon with the life that is to come. The winter Bride is holding a flood in deposit for the sun's withdrawal in spring. This is the canvas on which Amy Hale Auker paints the lives of her characters. Shiney, the ranch owner; Monte, the foreman; Rafe, the old hand; Jody, the new hand; Blake and Brenna, who can't seem to grow up even though they have a houseful of children. These, and many more, are waiting to show you how they live, love, work, and play in the shadow of the Bride. Auker’s writing is extraordinary, as evidenced by these reviews of her award-winning Rightful Place: “Her focus is sharp and discerning, intimate and clear – so refreshing that her writing transcends the contemporary cattle-culture and her harsh Texas landscape to become a template for creating a richer life.” John Dofflemyer, author of Poems from Dry Creek “Auker is fiercely connected – and will connect you as well – with the most elemental spirits of the earth and the heart.” Margo Metegrano, Director of The Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry Winter of Beauty is a novel by Amy Hale Auker, winner of the 2012 WILLA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, which will bring joy to your heart and tears to your eyes. Her words come from the heart and will melt you, just like the sun melts the snow on Bride Mountain. A working cowgirl, Auker writes and thrives on a ranch in Arizona where she is having a love affair with rock, mountains, piñon and juniper forests, the weather, and her songwriter husband, who is foreman of the ranch. As Amy says, “For years I cooked for cowboys, cleaned up after cowboys, listened to cowboys tell stories, but for the past five years I have done my own time in the saddle. And I write. Always I write.” She guides her readers to a place where the bats fly, lizards do pushups on the rocks, bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt. Where hummingbirds do rain dances in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon. Winter of Beauty will please the adult reader who enjoys the apt description of people and things; the understanding of nature, human or otherwise; and becoming immersed in them through a turn of phrase that brings both clarity of thought and joy in the reading.

The Story Is the Thing

These poems are love stories. Love stories to the land, to the past, to the present, to the future, to animals, to tracks in the sand, to hidden seep springs in deep canyons, to witches in the night, to wild grapes and longing, to campfires. But more than anything, they are love stories about work.

Livestock Man

Poetry

The Willa Literary Award Finalist for Original Softcover Fiction, 2015, Awarded by the Women Writing the West "Uncle Bill" Morgan knew about love and loss. He had watched over the land and the people at the Benson Ranch for decades. Julia was a free spirit, quirky and fun, trapped in a marriage with hospital corners and traditional expectations. Charlie was trapped as well, but by something more sinister than tradition and, in the end, realized that it is okay to love more. Cody Jack needed more — more of everything that soothed and comforted and numbed — but he stood to lose the only good thing he'd ever known and he would hurt anyone to keep it. The old cowboy is gone, but he left his story behind. It is a story of love, loss and life lessons, of confession and absolution, a story of poetry and rescue, a story of loneliness and a story of coming together. And, after all, the story is the thing.

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Books by Auker, Amy Hale

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Auker, Amy Hale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Rightful Place (Voice in the American West)

Rightful Place (Voice in the American West)

Winter of Beauty

Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs (Voice in the American West)

Winter of Beauty

The Story Is the Thing

Livestock Man

The Story Is the Thing