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FICTION | AVAILABLE NOW

TRIBUTARY
A Novel

by BARBARA K. RICHARDSON

"Richardson is a new American voice worth listening to." 

—Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars

A misfit in a Mormon frontier town in 1870s Utah, protagonist Clair Martin shows what polygamy feels like from inside the fold. Her stubborn search for identity takes Clair and a small band of mavericks—white, black and Shoshone—beyond the confines of the Utah Territory to the slums of Reconstruction Dixie, and back again. Here, one young woman’s life becomes a quiet revolution to untangle what she’s inherited from what she really needs. 

September 2012  | Historical Fiction |  9781937226046 | 352 pp | $15.95

"As wild and isolating as the determined, defiant Clair, the prairies and mountain ranges seduce both narrator and reader. Richardson has created rich, memorable characters."


—HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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In Tributary, BARBARA K. RICHARDSON claims the land of her Mormon ancestors who settled the northern Salt Lake Valley. Richardson earned an MFA in poetry from Eastern Washington University. Aside from writing, Barbara has renovated eight houses and planted thousands of trees and shrubs as a landscape designer. Barbara is also an avid environmentalist. She lives in Kamas, Utah.

PRAISE FOR TRIBUTARY

WINNER OF THE 2013 UTAH BOOK AWARD


THE 15 BYTES BOOK AWARD


THE WILLA LITERARY FINALIST AWARD​

 

“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’s own path.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Stunning. . . . Gritty. . . . Remarkable.”
—15 BYTES

 

“Richardson takes readers back to 1870 Utah for this tale of strength and survival. Raised as a Mormon, our hero Clair Martin travels to the American South, through Shoshone country, and back to Utah.”
—THE DENVER POST

 

"As wild and isolating as the determined, defiant Clair, the prairies and mountain ranges seduce both narrator and reader. Richardson has created rich, memorable characters."
—HIGH COUNTRY NEWS

"Richardson is a new American voice worth listening to."

Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars

"A lyrical and haunting story not to be missed."

Margaret Coel, author of Buffalo Bill's Dead Now

"I've been hungering for a book like this since I finished Lonesome Dove."

Lisa Jones, author of Broken: A Love Story

"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

"You'll love resolute Clair Martin, the equal of any man--or religion. Clair's strength and survival are the heritage of western women."

Sandra Dallas, author of True Sisters

"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 American West--Mormonism, racism, women who don't need marriage or men . . . Beautifully written and engaging."

Laura Pritchett, author of Sky Bridge

"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 Plain Language

"Just when Tributary seemed like a story rich enough for an entire novel--an account of a feisty young Mormon woman in the 1860s--it turned into a story set in the South, and then another in the West. In the end, Barbara Richardson's deceptively simple book is nothing less than an epic."

Jesse Kornbluth, HeadButler.com

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Image by Dan Meyers

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