On Kelsey Creek: A Novel by Phyllis Whetstone Taper

Bored Feet Press has set aside our reluctance to distribute fiction for this rich and powerful story of the people of Lake County shortly before the Great Depression.

With her first novel published at age 90, Taper vividly illuminates the thoughts, feelings, and hearts of her characters lives in the summer of 1927 in Lake County, California. Most folks struggle for a livelihood in Kelseyville, a tiny farm town where pears ripen beneath the slopes of Mt. Konocti, and everyone readies for the long days of the harvest. The young are brash and hopeful of success—in love, in business—while their elders wish only for for what is reasonably hard won. The promise of the harvest and the hopes of Kelsey Creek's women and men come up hard against the tragic events of this summer.

With precise descriptions of smell, sound and sight, Taper brings us into these hot days and nights, rendering the pivotal moments of these lives vividly and with grace. This enthralling first novel has already captured the attention of reviewers:

“Sensual settings and vivid characters... Taper's a Lake County native who left long ago to pursue a life away from the orchards, and her debut asa novelist marks a return of sorts to her childhood home. Thanks to her deft re-creation of the landscape and insight into human nature, this is ahomecoming readers can enjoy and will not soon forget.”
~ San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Book Review

“ ...an engaging work of fiction from the American West. Within the humane tradition of John Steinbeck and with the irony of Mark Twain, this is a treasure from a generation from which too few women's voices have been heard. Taper expresses the human landscape with the same clarity, frank honesty, and deep affectionate appreciation with which she describes the western panorama.”
~ Professor Robin Mark Freeman

“These intense and rich portraits create Kelseyville's summer as though we too were touched by it. Landscape, sounds, the very feel of the air, are captured with a rare brevity and power in this first novel.”
~ Robbie Brandwynne, Conservation Press

224 pages, 6" x 9", full-color cover. Published by Conservation Press.
ISBN 0-9762362-1-4 trade paper