"About Me"

Matt sometimes does searches that wouldn't occur to me, and last week sent two reviews of Querencia the book from two excellent blogs. First is from Terrie Miller in California, who also sent me the wonderful Bouchon cookbook. She writes in part: "To many of us, the love of wildlife seems directly opposed to the practice of hunting. But I’m starting to believe that hunting is not the problem…that our current mainstream culture is the problem, and that it’s perverted the ancient rite of hunting into another form of consumerism that is repugnant. That’s the topic of another post here someday…but Querencia and Eagle Dreams have played a part in my broadening view of these topics." I'd quote more but I am blushing as it is.

I will respect the privacy of the blogger "Nagrom" and not reveal his name but he has an excellent blog too, Rum and Donuts. I'm going to quote him at length because we actually know each other, though I didn't know he had a blog:

"I was raised "interesting". It did not seem so at the time, but what child ever really understands that their life may not be normal? It is in a nature of their very being to take whats put before them and run with it. What was put before me was a life in the outdoors, surrounded by art and books and guns, without other children, among the company of writers and cowboys, wetbacks and artists. And I thought that was how everyones life was.

(Snip)

"I have, through no organized intention, recently returned to some of the more interesting people of my childhood via literature. Now, I claim no particularly deep knowledge, connection, or friendship, with these men - Simply that I knew them, via my father, and ignored them in the way only children can adults.
Stephen Bodio was that weird guy with the dogs and falcons that my dad used to talk country living, guns and hunting with in the post office, gas station or coffee shop for what seemed like tedious hours to a six year old. I always knew he was a writer, but never really paid much attention until recently. While searching blogger several months ago I came across his excellent blog, Stephen Bodio's Querencia, much to my surprised delight. It has been a regular read ever since. At my parents home a few weeks ago, I was raiding their bookshelves for a few different volumes - Intending to borrow 10,00 Goddamn Cattle by Katie Lee, and Horseman Pass By by McMurtry, and whatever else I could lay hands on, I saw they had somewhere acquired a second paperback copy of Bodio's autobiographical work Querencia, so I nabbed that as well."

(Snip)

"As a writer who firmly believes, yet also struggles with the idea, that the best writing is done scared, done aching and afraid of whats on the paper but knowing it would be unhealthy to quit, I was fascinated and moved by Bodio's writing. Writing so freshly on the heels of a great loss, and detailing not the loss alone but the life before it, must have been both painful and healing, and it shows in the words, some of which simply bleed. Further, as a native resident of the small mountain community Bodio describes, more than the words of hope and sorrow bleed for me - People, places, events I knew, or have known, since childhood are described in loving detail. Seeing these individuals and things through the fresh eyes of Bodio, writing as the outsider coming in, was immensely pleasurable at the same time as it was often sad. Querencia has earned a permanent place on my bookshelf as a work of great love, and a documentation of a place and time that also exists somewhat in my own history, which is now gone."

All I can say is that his words moved me too, and thanks. He will be a writer to watch.

By the way, we'll have to fix away to sell them easily, but I now have the whole stock of the book.