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I met Molly Gloss when I was in high school in Eastern Oregon, the setting for her beautiful novel, The Jump-off Creek. She was a local hero for the simple reason that she wrote about our world, our hills, our familiar tamarack forests and sagebrush, our quiet people and the lives they lead. In a state best known for Portland and the accessibility of natural wonder to the urban I-5 corridor, it was a refreshing bit of acknowledgment to see real - published! - art showing an interest in and sensitivity to the rural eastern expanse of the state.

Not to wax too nostalgic: I didn't like growing up there. To me, the hills were beautiful, boring boundaries carefully dividing my sheltered little town from the weird, varied world I knew existed outside the valley. People were mean, and small-minded, and often simple and hateful. I was mocked until I got too strange, and then I was just feared; stupid, superficial things like purple hair and noserings became metaphysical symbols of all that the down-home culture despised, and they made damn sure I knew it.

It is odd, then, that a book like this should come along - a tender, honest portrait of a small community in Eastern Oregon, not directly inside the valley where I lived, but near by a county or two, which in rural terms means practically the same place - and completely break my heart. Never have I had so much longing for a thing I never loved.

First of all, don't judge a book by its cover. No, really. Never in a thousand years would I have chosen to read something with a golden sunset and a girl-on-horseback silhouette. Hell, I even try to avoid anything with the word "heart" in the title, unless it's closely followed by "darkness." If you can't get past it, I recommend wrapping the book in a plain brown wrapper and pushing on through, because if you don't, you will miss one of the more interesting examinations of small-town life, and with it, a young female hero demonstrating perfectly that role models don't need to be princesses, warriors, or ravishingly beautiful to be strong and, more importantly, real.