LIFE IS SHORT BUT WIDE by J. California Cooper, is a story about love: hard-to-find, hard-to-get, hard-to-keep love.
The narrator is 91-year-old Hattie B. Brown, who, along with her 105-year-old mother, relates the saga of a family that begins with Val Strong, a Native American cattle driver, and Irene, the African American woman he comes to love. Between them they build a life in Wideland, Oklahoma, with a house and some land. Their daughters, Rose and Tante, want different lives. Tante gets her PhD and moves to Paris, while Rose stays in the home she grew up in, continuing to teach poor children. Another family story, that of Herman Tenderman, emerges parallel to this one. It is when the two stories, or families, come together that the “hard” love story begins and winds its agonizing way to happiness. Cooper tells her story with simplicity and grace. No apologies are made for the foolishness or baseness of any of her characters, and she freely sermonizes and moralizes whenever she feels it is called for. The result is a poignant and often-funny story of people trying to survive and find someone to love.
J. California Cooper is the author of several novels, plays, and collections of short stories. She was the winner of the 1989 American Book Award. She has also won the Black Playwright of the Year (1978), the James Baldwin Writing Award (1988) and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association (1988).
October
2011
