Molly Gloss Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Standalone Novels
Outside the Gates | (1986) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Jump-Off Creek | (1989) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Dazzle of Day | (1997) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Wild Life | (2000) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Hearts of Horses | (2007) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Falling from Horses | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
Lambing Season | (2002) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Collections
Unforeseen | (2019) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Anthologies
Molly Gloss
Molly Gloss writes science fiction and realistic fiction. She is a fourth generation Oregonian that lives in Portland.
“The Jump-off Creek” was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American fiction, and won the Oregon Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. In the year 1996, she was a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award. “Wild Life” won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was selected for “If All Seattle Read the Same Book”. “The Dazzle of Day was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize and was named a New York Times Notable Book. M
Molly speaks to organizations and libraries, and as the keynote event for Common Reads. Her lecture topics have included, among others, the roles of women in the literature of the West, the craft and art of writing, and the western mythology in American culture. Her books have been chosen for Everybody Reads by small cities (Hood River) large cities (Seattle), and by rural communities (the Palouse).
“Outside the Gates” is the first stand alone novel and was released in 1986. Villagers had always been warned that monsters lived outside of the gates, however when Vren, a young boy, gets cast out, he discovers a home in the world beyond.
Vren has long been told that the world beyond the gates of his village is one that is filled with giants, monsters, and other horrifying creatures. However when he confides with his family about his ability to talk to animals, he gets cast out to the same world that he has been taught to fear his entire life.
He expects to just die alone, confused and lost, however he finds something altogether different: refuge in a community of shadowed people with extraordinary powers.
“The Jump-off Creek” is the second stand alone novel and was released in 1988. A widowed homesteader is determined to make a life in the unforgiving mountains in Oregon during the nineteenth century.
Molly Gloss drew on old family stories and pioneer diaries to write this modern Western classic of a solitary woman’s frontier life. During the 1890s, Lydia Sanderson leaves her old life behind and journey’s to Jump-Off Creek in order to make her own way as a homesteader. Eduring deprivations and hardships of Orgon’s high mountain country, she finds both the community and courage in her determination to survive.
Molly delivers an unsparing portrait of pioneer life, which is recounted simply and without any romanticism displaying an intimate comprehension of the harsh physical conditions of the Western frontier, as well as the practices and methods which made these conditions livable.
“The Dazzle of Day” is the third stand alone novel and was released in 1997. This is a widely celebrated and brilliant mixture of hard science fiction and literary fiction. Molly turns her attentions to the frontiers of the future, when people of our over-polluted Earth voyage out into the stars and settle some new worlds, to survive unpredictable and unknown hardships, and to make some new human homes.
Specifically, it’s a story about people that have grown up on a ship which is traveling to this new world, and about the culture and society which has evolved among them by the time that they arrive to their new home planet.
“Wild Life” is the fourth stand alone novel and was released in 2000. Erik is getting ready for his first ever hunting trip when he learns about his parents are getting deployed to Iraq. Just a few days later Erik gets shipped to North Dakota so he can live with Big Darrell and Oma, his grandparents that he hardly knows.
He rescues a dog which got stuck by a porcupine, Big Darrell tells him that he cannot keep him. However Erik has already named her Quill and simply cannot bear to give the dog up. He decides he’s going to run away, taking a shotgun and the dog with him, certain they’ll be able to make it on their own out on the prairie.
In this tale of survival and adventure, Erik learns more about the satisfactions and challenges of living off of the land, the pain of losing what you love, and the power of family secrets.
“The Hearts of Horses” is the fifth stand alone novel and was released in 2007. The heartwarming tale about a determined young woman with a gift for gentling the wild horses.
During the winter of 1917, a big-boned young lady arrives at George Bliss’ doorstep. She is trying to get hired breaking horses, and he hires her. Many of his regular hands have gone off to fight in the war, and he glimpses, under her showy rodeo garb, this shy yet strong-willed girl that has a serious knowledge of horses.
So starts the irresistible story of Martha Lessen, a nineteen year old female horse whisperer that is attempting to make a go of it in a man’s world. It was believed that the one and only way to break a horse was to buck all of the wild out of it, and tough falls and broken ribs merely were part of the job.
However over many hard and long winter months, many of the townsfolk in this isolated county of eastern Oregon witness her way of talking in sweet and low tones to horses thought to be beyond repair. She even gets miraculous, almost instant results and as a result, she earns her place of respect within the community.
Along the way, Martha helps out this family save their horses after their wagon slid off into a ravine. She gentles a horse for one dying man’s last gift to his young son. Martha also clashes with this hired hand that abuses horses in rather unspeakable ways. Before long, despite some of her better efforts to stay detached and aloof, she comes to feel enveloped by this sense of family and community that she has never had before.
This is a remarkable tale about how animals and people make connections and touch one another’s lives in the most profound and unexpected ways, with the elegant sweetness of “Plainsong” and a pitch-perfect sense of western life.
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