This Land

This Land is Kendall McCook’s first book, published in 1984 by Eakin Press. It tells the story of three generations of his people and their changing relationships to the land in Texas and northeastern New Mexico. Cloth, 136 pages.

New! Click here to listen to an audio introduction (mp3) of This Land by Kendall McCook, courtesy of Literal Systems.

Click below to hear the original song “This Land” read by Kendall on YouTube, and scroll down to read reviews of the book.

“These unusually vivid short stories span three generations and lament the passing of old ways and values…they reflect the feeling–widely shared–that we have let too many good and solid things get away in favor of plastic and gloss.” -Elmer Kelton

“A novel arrangement of artfully written stories, this book contains one of the loveliest sentences in the language. McCook is writing about what many of us have lost as we continually remove ourselves from the land and its magic.” - Michael Hinshaw, Dallas Morning News

“McCook is an accomplished and gifted writer, whose roots sink deep in Union County, New Mexico. This Land seeks the plain and unadorned truth. It is truth, and truth is not always pretty. — D. Ray Blakely, Union County Leader

“In This Land McCook has evoked effectively the aura of his part of the land and its impact on the members of one family who worked it, loved it, left it, returned to it; some weakened; some strengthened, all resolved to survive because of the power of it.” — William A. Owens

“Kendall McCook’s book, This Land, is a “haunter” — one of those slim volumes whose images and emotions return to mind long after the book is read. To even the most “citified” reader, This Land is a work that makes one look over the shoulder with a sense of foreboding for all of the small farm communities of this nation. — Carol Finch, Accent West

	“Poetry’s Roots Reach Backward” By William A. MacNeil December 28, 1997
	By Michael Hinshaw, 1985
	Review by Elmer Kelton, Livestock Weekly, December 20, 1984
	“A Spirit of Place” Review by Carol Finch Accent West, August 1985
	Review by Art Cuelho Jr., January 1985