Side Canyons

Note from Laurie

A Side Canyons Journey

From journal notes written on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in October of 2000, to master's thesis at Goddard College in Vermont in 2001, to pitching the book to agents and editors for several years, to winning the attention of acquisitions editor Russell Davis at the Writing the Rockies conference in Gunnison, Colorado, in the summer of 2003, to hard cover (September 2004) then trade paper (September 2005) publication with Five Star/An Imprint of Thomson-Gale--what amazing unfolding avenues of creative expression for a story. 

Side Canyons, one of my most popular works, is now out of print and the few remainder copies that I have on hand are being saved for posterity. A year and a half ago a new publisher wanted to reprint Side Canyons so we asked Five Star to revert all rights back to me.  My beloved boatman, Matt Herrman, who served as guide and friend on my Grand Canyon trip reread the story and made some corrections to eliminate a few geographical and cultural errors in the original text.  The new publisher and I worked on an updated and revised edition during the summer of 2008.  By September of that year the new book had been designed and cover art chosen.  However, that publisher was never able to follow through with their commitment to print the book.  When that publisher closed its doors in June 2009, I asked that they return all rights to Side Canyons to me. 

That is when my webmaster, Deborah Kunzie, approached me about the possibility of bringing Side Canyons out in e-book format.  The timing seemed perfect.  My websites were up and running.  I was blogging weekly on several different topics.  My first e-book Working with Words was doing well. The new edition of Side Canyons was ready to go.  Deborah had a fine color photo to use as the new cover and she was anxious to try her hand at designing another e-book for me.  Most of all we wanted this popular book to be available to my readers once more at an affordable price.

So here you have Side Canyons, the e-book version, to download to your computer and/or to print out for your personal enjoyment.  I hope the story will captivate your heart and perhaps change your life, as living these events changed mine.  If you have any questions about my memorable river trip or about the ins-and-outs of keeping this story alive in the world, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. 

Description

Based on journal notes written during a raft trip on the Colorado River, Side Canyons is a tale of the personal evolution of an impassioned woman and her increasingly intimate relationship with the natural world in nine challenge-filled days.  A breathtaking, beautiful novel from one of the West’s fine poets.

Customer Reviews

The Denver Post

    “Edward Abbey once described the Grand Canyon as a place to ‘confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence.’  Poet Laurie Wagner Buyer joins Abbey and a thousand others, beginning with John Wesley Powell in 1869, who have tried to put into words the personal impact of that experience.
    In her autobiographical novel, Buyer goes in search of self-renewal.  Childless and discontent in a fragile marriage to a close-mouthed rancher, Laurie agrees to go with four other women on a nine-day trip down the Colorado River.  Yet she is plagued with worry about what her absence will do to her marriage.  She brings too much gear.  The mixed group they meet on the beach is larger than she anticipated, but once on the river, as the first wave splashes over her, her initial fears subside. 
    Through journal notes turned into narrative and poetry, Laurie records her awe at her surroundings, her interaction with fellow travelers, her growing courage.  As thousands before her discovered, she emerges from the canyon with new insights.
    Sensitively told, the novel also contains a nice touch of humor.  But it lacks the depth found in the essays of 15 other female writers who chronicled their journey down the Colorado in the 1997 award-winning Writing Down the River.”   

--Sybil Downing, Regional Fiction Reviewer for The Denver Post

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“I’ve seen many Grand Canyon books, but Laurie’s Side Canyons is one of the best. The intensity of emotion and reality of thought can only be compared, in my limited experience, to old dead Ed Abbey and that’s a compliment. I’m impressed with how Laurie got the place. I love her poetry because her grasp of Canyon settings is truly awesome. She has a feeling for the natural world that few people express these days. Plus, she knows how to tell a good story.”

--Matt Herrman, Grand Canyon Boatman

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“Part memoir, part prose, all poetry--this is an elegant, sensual story like no other, one written with tenderness and courage. Poetry flows into prose and back again while inner thoughts define outer observation. How deftly Laurie’s proven that old adage, that it's not the destination but the journey--how far the heroine had to go to find her old self, her true self. And she found magic and beauty virtually everywhere on the river and lets us see it with her untouchable, inimitable pen. Laurie’s taken the English language to new heights: each poem her heroine writes is more profound, more brilliant than the next.
I once rode a wild river too. Four days on the Green, shooting the great rapids at the Gates of Lodore, where I fell out of the raft and had to be rescued, plucked out of the water by another rafting crew, thank god. I'll never forget it. During that time, I photographed the wild flowers, the stone cliffs, the sand snakes, the symbols on the rocks. I never thought to write about the experience as I had not yet found my writer’s voice. But I do remember, even more now, thanks to Laurie’s Side Canyons. I never dreamed anyone could bring those Canyon and River images to life as she has done. I don't need to ride the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Laurie has done it for me and I thank her for that.
I'm in awe of the power and emotion in this touching beautiful book which brought tears to my eyes more times than I can count. And joy and laughter too. Simply, I couldn't put it down. And yes, guess what? Laurie’s heroine is not alone in her desire to savor everything in life. I, too, want it all. Many of us do. I hope Laurie will count me in as a lace maker in the company of women who are embroidered or woven into her life.
I hope to join her on other adventures. I can’t wait for her next book.”

--Corinne Joy Brown, author of MacGregor’s Lantern

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Roundup Magazine

    “Alternating poems and prose tell the story of a woman’s transformation during a nine-day trip down the Colorado River thorugh the Grand Canyon.  Laurie shares the secrets of her heart as she searches for the reason she feels fatigued and ill.  She wonders why life has to be the way it is.  She wonders why she and her rancher husband must work so hard for so little in return.  She writes poetry and articles and fears her husband doesn’t like the person she is becoming.  She agrees to go on a river trip with an old friend and three other women, but is afraid to tell her husband until the last minute because she knows he will be upset at her for leaving him.  He fears she won’t return.
    Laurie’s time on the river allows her to explore relationships that are the side canyons of the title.  She reaches out to the guide, Robb, but chooses to ride in someone else’s boat in the last days.  Robb is married and so is she, and their lives are somewhere off the river.  She carries the sense of the river in her heart as she drives home to the ranch and her husband.  Perhaps she misses the boatman she fell in love with, or did she really fall in love with him or was it the river?  Side Canyons is a book with as many nuances as the human heart.”    

--Doris Meredith, Roundup Magazine, February 2005

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Editorial Review From Booklist

    “Laurie is invited by her old friend, Angie, to go on a river trip through the Grand Canyon with three other women. She is reluctant to leave her Montana ranch and taciturn husband. Making the trip could jeopardize their marriage, but she decides to go when he doesn't seem to object, and Angie insists. Laurie brings her journal, and she recounts her journey with great emotion as she feels herself connecting to her new surroundings with the help of the expert guides. Laurie feels herself expanding and reaching out to the land, the beauty of which the guides truly understand, but the camaraderie among the women starts to deteriorate, and Laurie finds that she may not understand her friend Angie as well as she thought. The vivid details bring the landscape and the thrill of rafting into focus as each traveler is affected differently by the environment, experiences echoed in the poetry Buyer includes in this spiritually angled tour of a revered place, an autobiographical novel that brings the Grand Canyon's unique beauty to life.”

--Patty Engelmann Copyright © American Library Association.