Last Bear McCain
Publisher: Castle Peak Editions
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Grants Pass, Oregon
Format: paperback
Number of pages: 308
Description: [From the Author's Note:] I began LAST BEAR McCAIN during fall term, 1962, at the University of Oregon. ... By June I'd completed two versions of the tale, then titled FEVER IN THE EARTH. ... [B]y 1977 the book had gone through several revisions and was published as a long narrative poem. Even then the fable kept drawing me back. I turned it into prose and revised that--then once again into poetry through two further full reworkings, and finally, during summer of 2002..., the book became a novel once more, its title transformed to LAST BEAR McCAIN. ... Total elapsed years [to publication in 2004]: forty-two. Abram, Isaac, Mack, Iphigenia, April, Burt, Sheriff Hutchings, the others--these purely fictional beings have all become part of the family. With this present publication..., I hereby turn them loose. An author, after all, cannot spend an entire lifetime working on one book.... --Bill Hotchkiss, Munger Creek, Oregon, January 1, 2004.
Table of contents: title: Canto One: Return to Deer Creek 1; title: Canto Two: Abram's Journal 22; title: Canto Three: The Interlude of Isaac 54; title: Canto Four: Iphigenia 76; title: Canto Five: The Breaking 99; title: Canto Six: A Progress of Spring 129; title: Canto Seven: The Yellow Dancer 150; title: Canto Eight: Summer Rainstorm 175; title: Canto Nine: Against the Current 203; title: Canto Ten: Numunana Lives in the Inyo 220; title: Canto Eleven: I Am My Father 250; title: Canto Twelve: The Hunt 273