Pleasure of Believing

By Anastasia Hobbet

Book Overview

Roberta Shea's forebears carved a cattle ranch out of the Wyoming wilderness. But she does not share in her neighbors' assumption that the pioneers' sacrifices have bestowed upon them the right to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1569470855
• ISBN13: 9781569470855
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Soho Pr Inc
• Length: 325 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 1.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

The Pleasure was All Mine

"Pleasure of Believing" is one of the most compelling books I've had the "pleasure" of reading in a long, long time. Staged along the backdrop of the rugged, western Wyoming countryside by day and spacious starlit skies by night, we are lured, word by word, into an adventure where one is held captive to the text on the page...yet perfectly willing to surrender to it. The author's descriptive passages are abundantly beautiful with words that roll off the page like lyrics to a song. The characters are interesting, well-rounded folks who capture our trust and mistrust at the same time. Neither angels nor villains, we follow their actions and reactions through a series of events which eventually lead to an unfortunate and avoidable tragedy. As a result of the author's passion and skillful story-telling, readers will have a more complete understanding and better appreciation for wildlife conservation and preservation. Bravo to Ms. Hobbet, and cheers to her next literary masterpiece!

Pleasure of Reading

Anastasia Hobbet is an exquisite writer. Every paragraph is a pleasure to read--for its language, its descriptons, its characterizations. The story itself is a fascinating study of the competing interests of environmentalists and individuals struggling to survive economically in the face of environmental restrictions, specifically, ranchers whose sheep are being preyed upon by coyotes. Hobbet's characters on both sides of the divide are finely drawn--complex, loveable, and realistic. Set in Wyoming, the novel creates a strong sense of ranching country. The story takes us into the lives of Roberta Shea, a raptor rescuer, her visiting urban niece, and Roberta's friend and neighboring sheep rancher, Carl Drummond. To save his sheep, Carl resorts to illegally poisoning coyotes, with catastrophic results for the eagles that feed upon them, the very birds Roberta works to conserve. The author clearly knows birds as well as ranching and ably navigates the complicated moral issues her novel raises. A book that should not be missed.

Pleasure of Remembering

I can hardly believe it's been more than a decade since I read Pleasure of Believing; so much of its rhythm and beauty has stayed with me. Hobbet has a gift for creating complicated, fumbling, profoundly loveable characters, human beings who get caught up in important issues without being subsumed by the author's opinions. Even more impressive, Pleasure of Believing portrays characters on opposite sides of a terrible gulf. Rarely in American letters has an author understood the opposition to the environmental movement as deeply as the movement itself. It's the kind of understanding we need if we are to move forward on some of the most critical decisions facing us.

A pleasure, indeed--

When I realized the book was set in Wyoming, I dreaded yet another Spacious Romance: a young urban femme, fleeing heartache, comes clutching her worn volume of Shelley, finds work on a ranch, weeps at the beauty of Everything, and then falls in love with a Real Cowboy. I was primed to hate the book: unfair, but true. Instead, I loved it. Ms. Hobbet, bless her socks, has a gift for skirting the obvious Western Stuff and a Woolf-ish eye for things that matter. And she tells a quietly gripping tale. Born to a Wyoming ranch, Roberta Shea has sold her cattle and turned the barn into a clinic for raptors: hawks burned by power lines, eagles grazed by semi-trucks, and other wingéd casualties. Her niece, fleeing a career in advertising, arrives and promptly falls for the local vet, a decent sort who's named not Shane or Clint or Buck, but Sherman. Meanwhile, on the neighboring ranch, Roberta's old friend Carl Drummond finds a coyote-killed ewe and lamb, and angered by a brush-off from a government trapper, resorts to poison. As eagles begin to drop from the sky, the tragedy unfolds without pause or break, more classical than Western, composed not of land-grabs and gunshots, but of yearnings that collide. Hobbet's sketch of the landscape-- the windswept basins between Casper and Medicine Bow-- is spare and evocative; the novel is enriched but not overwhelmed by its sense of place. The raptors-- eagles, hawks, and owls-- are beautifully described. Too often, wild animals are either sentimentalized or endowed with false powers, but here they have a hieratic presence, as actors in the tale. She also has the ability to render life's moral dimensions without losing touch with the more immediate ones. Her characters live as we do, in a complex present. As an environmental activist, sprung from four ranching generations, I see in them some of my own conflicting impulses. I've read quite a few works of fiction set in Wyoming and this one stands above the crowd-- a must-read.