William Kittredge is a renowned novelist and master essayist of the American West. He grew up on his family's huge cattle ranch in Oregon and was a farmer until he was 35 years old. Weary of raising cattle, he gave in to a creative urge he knew none of his fellow Oregon ranchers would understand. Kittredge retired and made a clean break from ranching and enrolled in the University of Iowa writer's workshop and then held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. He went on to become a distinguished Professor of English and taught creative writing at the University of Montana, where he...