Winter Count

Aflock of great blue herons descending through a snowstorm to the streets of New York. . . . A river in Nebraska disappearing mysteri-ously. . . . A ghostly herd of buffalo that sings a song of death. . . . A mystic who raises constellations of stones from the desert floor. . . . All these are to be found in Winter Count, the exquisite and rapturous collection by the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams.

In these resonant and unpredictable stories Barry Lopez proves that he is one of the most important and original writers at work in America today. With breathtaking skill and a few deft strokes he produces painfully beautiful scenes. Combining the real with the wondrous, he offers us a pure vision of people alive to the immediacy and spiritual truth of nature.


“Perfectly crafted. . . . [These] stories expand of their own accord, lingering in the mind the way intense light lingers in the retina.” —Los Angeles Times

“Flawless—As painstakingly crafted and as resonant as a good classical guitar.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Animals and landscapes have not had this weight, this precision, in American fiction since Hemingway’s young heroes were fishing the streams of upper Michigan and Spain.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Richly allusive, moving, compassionate, these stories celebrate the web of nature that holds the world together.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“An artist in language—a first-rate American writer. Lopez goes straight to the heart of the peculiar sensations, both physical and mental, known to all who have allowed themselves open communion with the land.” —Edward Abbey