TORREY HOUSE PRESS
NEW AND UPCOMING
TRUE WEST
by Betsy Gaines Quammen
True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.
OCTOBER 2023
WHAT FALLS AWAY
stories by Karin Anderson
What Falls Away by Karin Anderson is a novel of family, art, and the raw process of healing. Cassandra Soelberg, pregnant at seventeen, was cast out by Mormon patriarchs of her community. Returning to her rural Utah hometown after forty years to care for her senile mother, she meets a young man with an uncanny resemblance to the father of her never-known child. Drawn back into traumatic scenes of young adulthood, she must reconcile with her past in the fiercely beautiful landscapes that shaped her.
AUGUST 2023
PLAYING WITH WILDFIRE
by Laura Pritchett
A wildfire is bearing down. Evacuation orders are issued. Playing with Wildfire recounts the trauma and communal moments of a mountain town’s inhabitants as a fire roars their way. Playing with experimental form in order to subvert storytelling expectations, told in polyphonic voices to inspire inclusion, and with a storyline that illustrates companionship in a bifurcated country, this book plays with expectations on every level. Above all, it shows us that demolition might be an opportunity for renovation of how we live on planet Earth.
FEBRUARY 2023
BLACK DIAMONDS
by Catherine Young
In 1855, the landscape painter George Inness began work on his commissioned painting The Lackawanna Valley. A century later, a girl in Scranton, Pennsylvania, looks out over her coal-strewn homeland wishing for beauty and wondering where the artist had stood with his canvas. The interplay between the two stories is at the heart of Catherine Young’s memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored By Coal. Young invites readers into a world now vanished, but which lingers in shimmering portraits. A lyric work of environmental history, Black Diamonds gives voice to the birthplace of the industrial revolution in North America and the consequences for the people and the forgotten valley that once powered the nation.
SEPTEMBER 2023
MONSTER FISHING
by Mark Spitzer
An investigation into the bioethics of fish pain and suffering leads to a lifestyle-changing discovery for monster-fisher Mark Spitzer. Monster Fishing: Caught in the Ethics of Angling is a bestiary of gar, sharks, ratfish, buffalo, carp, pike, gaspergou, and the human spirit fighting to preserve a planet in distress. After fifty years of fishing waters worldwide, extreme angler Mark Spitzer takes a hard look at his impact on monster fish and their environments. Through action-packed adventures exploring both familiar and foreign waters during a deadly global pandemic, this deep dive into the neurobiology of fish suffering and stress invites a new way of seeing aquatic species and holding ourselves accountable for the health of our shared planet.
JULY 2023
A WOUNDED DEER LEAPS HIGHEST
by Charlie J. Stephens
In 1980’s Oregon, Smokey is figuring out how to survive childhood with a young mom who is increasingly desperate in her search for love. As their mother's boyfriends come and go, Smokey aches for the comfort and safety their mother can never quite provide. When a dangerous new man moves into the house, Smokey seeks refuge in the nearby forests—finding comfort as they give themselves over to the strength and beauty of the natural world.
APRIL 2023
THE MISSING MORNINGSTAR
by Stacie Shannon Denetsosie
Stacie Shannon Denetsosie confronts long-reaching effects of settler-colonialism on Native lives in a series of gritty, wildly imaginative stories. A young Navajo man catches a ride home alongside a casket he’s sure contains his dead grandfather. A gas station clerk witnesses the kidnapping of the newly crowned Miss Northwestern Arizona. A young couple’s search for a sperm donor raises questions of blood quantum. This debut collection grapples with a complex and painful history alongside an inheritance of beauty, ceremony, and storytelling.
SEPTEMBER 2023
A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO THE END
OF THE WORLD
by David Gessner
From wildfires to hurricanes, New York Times bestselling author David Gessner's coast-to-coast guide to navigating climate crisis. Gessner takes readers on an eye-opening tour of climate hotspots from the Gulf of Mexico to the burning American West to New York City to the fragile Outer Banks, where homes are being swallowed by the seas. He does so with his usual sense of humor, compassion, and a willingness to talk to anyone, providing an informative and sobering yet convivial guide for the age of fire, heat, wind, and water.
JUNE 2023