Hard Scrabble

The two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Goodbye to a River ruminates over what an “unmagnificent” Texas homestead has meant to him.   “A kind of homemade book—imperfect like a handmade thing, a prize. It’s a galloping, spontaneous book, on occasion within whooping distance of that greatest and sweetest of country books, Ivan Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Notebook .” —Edward Hoagland, The New York Times Book Review   “His subjects are trees and brush, hired help, fences, soil