conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled West of Here about em>West, Here</em, Port with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000654881"><strong>Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011</strong></a>: the author opens his electrifying epic, <em>West of Here</em>, at the Elwha River dam, where over a hundred years since settlers of the fictional town of Port Bonita tamed the river, their descendants gather in anticipation of the dam's blasting, and a new era of restoration. Across the next five hundred pages, the author's story moves between 2006 and the town's earliest days at the close of the 19th century, overlaying stories of the people who passed through or dug in at Port Bonita, which swelled from settlement to town on the ragged shoreline of Washington State's Strait of Juan de Fuca. The past is populated by intrepid folk--an exploration party penetrating the Olympic Mountain range in the depths of winter, Klallam natives sickened by homeland eviction and whiskey, a young feminist at odds with motherhood, a prostitute doing covert battle with her whorehouse's owner, and an idealistic entrepreneur, blasting the river canyon into submission. In 2006, we meet their softer progeny--an ex-con who flees into the mountains with a stash of Snickers, the lonely parole officer determined to find him, a fish processing plant worker with a Bigfoot fixation, a native woman who rethinks her whole life when her son has a psychic break, and more memorable characters haunted by the past, by their unlived lives, by themselves. Though its themes are weighty, <em>West of Here</em> never bogs down--irreverent humor, lustrous prose, and unexpected moments animate a tale as vast as the land it inhabits. --<em>Mari Malcolm</em>
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.. End with the sentence ' She wheezed for breath in the thinning air and did not bother to narrow her eyes against the windblown snow, as Reese tried to give her comfort.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: West of Here
  The very morning of the impasse, while eating his cold stack of gillettes by the weak fire — the last gillettes he would eat for the remainder of the journey — Mather pondered the decision still.
  Indeed, there was coal in Mather's belly, and it was a slow burning panic. Was it fear that had him leaning toward the west? Fear that the southwest route would be the longer crossing and that food scarcity was more likely to catch up with him and his men? Or was it recklessness that drove him west? The courage to lower his shoulder and charge straight at Olympus, just as he'd charged up the gut of the Elwha. An honest accounting of himself that morning by the fire yielded the unsettling suspicion in Mather that it was the former. And had he given his own doubts the power, had he been able to summon any passionate response whatsoever to the journey ahead, it might have been one of mortal fear.
  After an hour march up a pristine snowfield — the last visible thing approximating a gentle rise — the party arrived at the base of the wedge-shaped collision of mountains that formed the junction of the two valleys, one running southwest to the head of the Elwha, the other due west toward Olympus. Mather stopped in his snowy path until the others pulled nearly even with him. The wind was whistling on the plateau, swirling with snowflakes, stinging the men's faces.
  To be heard over the blow, Mather was forced to project his voice. "Well then, here we are," he said.
  Reese was scratching Dolly's neck, though the beast was disconsolate. The skin of her legs was scraped clean below the knee. Her forelegs festered. She wheezed for breath in the thinning air and did not bother to narrow her eyes against the windblown snow, as Reese tried to give her comfort.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: When she was within shouting distance, Hoko called out his name and waved her arms in the air, but Thomas paid her no notice. He did not so much as glance in her direction as she approached
  Hoko looked him right in the eye, knowing he did not like to be looked in the eye. The boy gazed steadily back at her without the slightest light of recognition. Behind his steely blue eyes, Hoko thought she caught a glimpse of what George Sampson called the Invisible Storm, and it sent cold fingers running down the back of her neck.
  To her further surprise, the boy allowed Hoko to take his hand, and she began leading him down Ediz Hook toward Hollywood Beach. The clouds on the horizon were draining of color. Darkness began to settle over Hoko and Thomas as they walked, and the lanterns of Port Bonita began to alight, along with the fires of Hollywood Beach.
  The boy could summon only flashes of a recent past. A desolate beach, not so different from this one, the pounding surf, the urgent crowing of a dozen seagulls swirling above. The eyeless, bone-white carcass of a dogfish and its unaccountable significance. Apples and cigarettes and the cold metallic stink of armpits. Dry throat, and aching spine. Stinking rags, hatred, and the sting of fire and ice.
  He could only understand the woman when she spoke English. He did not know if he was inside of his head or outside in the world. He did not know whether he was talking or thinking. He did not know whether he was deciding what happened next or whether what happened next was deciding him.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last paragraph.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A huge thanks to my brilliant editor and advocate Chuck Adams, who pushed me to do my best work at every juncture. Also, big thanks to Elisabeth Scharlatt, Ina Stern, Craig Popelars, Michael Taeckens, Jude Grant, Brunson Hoole, Katie Ford, Michael Rockliff, and everyone top to bottom at Algonquin. And lastly, my friend, agent, and trusted reader, Mollie Glick.