Author Event: Jack Clinton

Come meet Jack Clinton, author of Clovis, on Friday evening, May 11, starting at 5:30. Jack will read from and lead a discussion about his debut novel. Afterward, he will sign books.

Clovis casts an eye across the vast, empty lands of the Western American basins where the clamor of petroleum development rings tirelessly. It is a book that bears witness to the quiet environmental usurpation of American public lands.

The story involves a female archeologist who is hired to survey a remote area of Wyoming for artifacts where a pipeline is to be installed. The permit the company needs to operate on public land requires this survey, but nobody at the pipeline company wants her work to turn up anything that will cause construction delays. And then she stumbles across a 15,000-year-old Clovis artifact. Suddenly, as they work to preserve an ancient site, she and her team of archeologists find themselves squarely in the way of the CanAm pipeline.

The central character's mind turns to the possible history of the Clovis people, and their apocalyptic demise at the hands of their own elegant invention, the Clovis Point. She relates their eclipsed culture to the precarious balance of her own world and the gradual destruction of our collective natural wealth.

About the Author

Jack Clinton went from being a mountain climber and ski-bum to teaching Spanish at Red Lodge High school. He is the winner of the $1,000 Neltje Blanchan Award for the best fiction informed by a relationship with the natural world.