High Plains Tango

by Robert James Waller, Robertson Dean (Narrated by)

Overview

With over 10 million copies sold, bestselling author Robert James Waller returns with the haunting, evocative story of a small town, a beautiful and mysterious woman, and the man forever changed by both.

The wild places are where no one is looking anymore. Out there on the high plains, among the Sioux reservations and the silent buttes, among the small towns dying and the people with them, you can hear the wind. And on the back of the wind is the sound of an old accordion—tangos—mingling with the lonely thump of a single drum in the nighttime and a far-off warrior’s cry. On the back of the wind is the smell of worn saddle leather and sawdust, of sandalwood, and smoke from ancient ceremonial fires. To this, to a town called Salamander, comes Carlisle McMillan, a traveler and master carpenter seeking a place of quiet amid the grinding roar of progress. Near Wolf Butte, a strange and apparently haunted monolith, he finds his quiet, or so he believes, and begins rebuilding a decrepit house as a tribute to the gruff old man who taught him a carpenter’s skills, rebuilding his life at the same time.

He finds two very different, independent women: Gally Deveraux, who works at a diner in Salamander and longs for something more than she is, and Susanna Benteen, beautiful and enigmatic, who was drawn to Salamander for mysterious reasons of her own, a woman the town has labeled a witch. The women and his carpenter’s trade and an old Indian known as Flute Player bring Carlisle a sense of contentment for a while. But his quiet is shattered as bulldozer treads begin to turn and the Yerkes County War commences. Run or stand your ground, that is Carlisle’s dilemma, Gally on one side, Susanna on the other.

Robert James Waller’s fully imagined characters become people we know and care for deeply.

High Plains Tango is the hauntingly lyrical story of a small town in the middle of nowhere, a town that forever changed—and was forever changed by—one man.

Bonus: Includes an exclusive interview with the author.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739320495
Publisher:	Books on Tape, Inc.
Publication date:	06/27/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Robert James Waller is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers The Bridges of Madison County and Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend. His other works include the New York Times bestsellers Old Songs in a New Café: Selected Essays, Border Music, and Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, and his book of photographs, Images.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Not exactly a dark and stormy night, but nonetheless: a strange, far place in a strange, far time, distant buttes with low, wet clouds hanging across their rumpled white faces and long, straight highways running somewhere close to forever. In a settled land, the truly wild places are where nobody is looking anymore. This was a wild place.

Enigmatic sign pointing west.

Why did the eagle die? Did anyone remember? Some did, but they weren't talking.

Red dirt road perpendicular to the highway, heading into the short grass and disappearing over a low rise a half mile out.

Other signs, every thirty miles or so, pointing to other roads hinting travel through invisible walls and into other times. If you had a vehicle with enough stamina, maybe turn off on one of them, just for the hell of it. We've all had a fleeting urge to do that.

That's what Carlisle McMillan did. He was in no hurry, a traveler without design, a temporary drifter by his own choice. After turning his tan Chevy pickup off westbound pavement onto what the locals called Wolf Butte Road, he headed south past the Dead Eagle Canyon sign. After a while, he stopped his truck and got out, miles from the nearest little town.

Late August cool. Mist. Carlisle McMillan stood there for a few moments, boots becoming grass wet, sky water on his face and hands.

Easy wind came, went, came again. Silence. Cattails bending, yellow clover riffling as the wind chose. Like a film without a sound track--the silence--only deeper. More like a stone coffin at nightfall when the mourners have left and dirt has been shoveled over you.

The Cheyenne believed this was sacred ground. Sweet Medicine said it was so. The hawk sitting thirty fence posts south of Carlisle McMillan believed it. Anyone who happened on this place believed it. The smart money would come with food and water, perhaps a sleeping bag, in case an engine failed or a tire relented and the spare was empty. For nothing out here cared about you, that much was clear. Nothing cared whether you lived or died or paid your bills or danced on warm Pacific beaches and made love afterward. There was nothing except silence and wind, and they would be here long after your passing.

The Early Ones were buried here in mounds, giving the appearance of sea roll to the prairie. They shuffled across the old land bridges from Asia when the continents were connected in the high north. A century ago, others were buried in this place. Buried where they fell in the wars of Manifest Destiny, the great westward push. You could still find metal buttons from cavalry tunics if you scuffled around in the gravel and looked close. Other things, too, old knife handles, human shoulder bones splintered by lance and bullet, pipe stems. If you dug, you would find more, a lot more.

Six inches behind Carlisle McMillan's left rear tire was a tunic button half buried in the mud. The winds of a hundred springs uncovered the button, rain washed it into a creek. The creek carried it onto a sandbar. A bird picked it up and flew toward a nest, dropping it when it turned out to be hard and tasteless. That particular button once fastened the coat of Trooper Jimmy C. Knowles, Seventh Cavalry, who rode behind a man they called Son of the Morning Star. Trooper Knowles thought well of his yellow-haired general and aspired to be a cut-and-paste copy of him. He would have ridden into hell with Son of the Morning Star. And he eventually...

Editorial Reviews

Waller here extends The Bridges of Madison County franchise by focusing on the son of photographer Robert Kincaid, the original book's protagonist. Master carpenter Carlisle McMillan is disgusted by the big-city developmental mind-set of forsaking quality for quantity to turn a quick buck; he becomes restless, traveling throughout America and settling at last in the small town of Salamander, SD, home to sacred Indian burial grounds and the striking and mysterious Susanna Benteen. Drawing on the caring craftsmanship instilled in him by his surrogate father, Cody Marx, McMillan transforms a ramshackle house into a home only to find himself fending off government plans to build a highway through his property. Waller's tale leisurely meanders through the various lives that McMillan touches with the requisite pulling of the heartstrings. The abrasive attitudes of the townsfolk-along with the corruption of local politicians and businesspeople-serve as a counterpoint to the apparently faultless McMillan. Pat as it is, this novel will be in demand owing to the popularity of Waller's previous Kincaid titles. Recommended for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/05.]-Joy St. John, Henderson Dist. P.L., NV Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Waller (Puerto Vallarta Squeeze, 1995, etc.) brings schmaltz to another plane with this tale of a small prairie town threatened by evil highway developers. One of the few surprises here is that the setting-the tiny burg of Salamander, S.D.-is far from idealized. Instead of the expected portrait of hardy Midwestern folk fighting tough times and bad weather with heartland pluck, we get a caustic handful of farmers griping about big government while pocketing their subsidy checks and watching their town dry up and start to blow away. Into this landscape of no expectations comes Carlisle McMillan, a bookish California carpenter with a vaguely hippy air and looks that set the womenfolk's hearts aflutter. With his hardscrabble, educated idealism and rough-hewn good looks, he's like Jesus with a libido. Carlisle buys a rundown shack on the outskirts of town and sets about renovating it, which provides the bulk of the drama for about the first half of the story. Sadly, that's much more interesting than the melodramatic complications that follow. Once Carlisle finishes his shack-filled with gorgeous little handcrafted objets d'art, as well as not one but eventually two nubile local women, wouldn't you know-he has the luck to find a rare species of hawk living nearby. The hawks become an issue once the government decides to run a six-lane highway right through his land. The townspeople, worried that Carlisle and his endangered birds are going to stall the highway (which they've been hoodwinked into thinking is an economic necessity), launch a campaign of intimidation, which proves far less interesting than the mundane details of how he fixed it up his house. Swinging from renovation chic toantidevelopment polemic, Waller stops along the way for some hackneyed business about an Indian sacred site nearby. About half a book, and pretty thin at that.

Kirkus Reviews

The Bridges of Madison County fans will relish this latest follow-up.” —Chicago Tribune

“Blends Waller’s trademark romanticism with earthy humor and a powerful environmental message.” —Dayton Daily News

“A solid story with interesting characters . . . Waller gives the narrator the most wonderful wit.” —Omaha World-Herald

From the Publisher