By Ted Conover
I met author Ted Conover in July of 2019 when he came to visit the Conejos Writers Circle and generously talk with us about his writing process and his current project, Cheap Land Colorado. It is not often that our little group has an opportunity to chat with someone who routinely publishes with the Big Five publishing houses. By not often, I mean never, until Ted Conover.
In this book, Conover explores what it is like to live in the frontier portion of Colorado’s San Luis Valley, which is my home. His focus is on an area east of me called the flats, among other things. Reading it brought up an assortment of emotions. I found it familiar, disturbing, and therapeutic.
It was odd for me to read about Conover’s interactions with so many people I know personally. The people who run the shelter, the local history experts, the mayor, the list goes on. That’s what happens when you live in a rural area. You know people. I like the idea of far-away readers getting a glimpse of the Lobatos bridge, Milagros coffee house, the Dutch Mill restaurant, and Cole Park. I don’t necessarily want them all to come here, but I like the idea that they know we exist.
The San Luis Valley is so rural that my best friend told me when she came to visit that the quiet made it hard for her to sleep at my house. I love the quiet and the dark skies here. The quiet nights at my house in town are nothing compared to the isolation of the flats. There is something mystical and magical about the valley and it seems to me to be concentrated in the area south and east of me. I’ve written poems about it. (See I Came From Here and August on Highway 142.) I appreciated reading Conover’s descriptions of the valley’s beauty.
The pandemic hit while this book was still a work in progress. I work in public health and the first two years were the most challenging years of my professional life so far. It felt like swimming against a riptide of disinformation and misinformation every day. At one point Conover recounts a conversation with a friend who claimed the pandemic wasn’t real. Conover took out his phone and pulled up a public health update written and distributed by my team that listed the number of local cases and deaths so far. The doubter, confronted with local information, said he believed that part, but still had reservations about other things. It was surprisingly healing for me to read that tiny bit of insight into how our work was being perceived.
I spent a large part of my adult work life in direct contact with people living on the margins and I appreciate the approach taken in this book. Conover does an amazing job at slipping into the lives of the people he writes about, and he presents them as he sees them, leaving judgment for the readers. He talks frankly about what brings people to live on the flats, and what life is like for them, illuminating both the dissimilarities and the similarities among them as well as their complicated relationship with the local government.
One of the less-than-flattering aspects of this valley is its violent history, which Conover summarizes well. Conover talks about the ubiquitous number of guns among the people living on the flats. I don’t think it’s just out there. I like to think I live in a safe place where people trust one another. The most common posts on the Facebook page of my local neighborhood watch group are about dogs, cows, pigs, goats, and sheep on the loose. The next most common kind of post is about unfamiliar suspicious vehicles in town. We are suspicious of outsiders and sometimes suspicious of one another. I like to believe the best about people and I try to avoid making actual enemies, so I feel pretty safe here. For me, there’s a certain tension between caution and optimism when it comes to living here.
I expect to be thinking about this book for a while. Overall, I recommend it, but not for everyone. If you are sensitive to violence or if you are a local person who prefers not to see the less flattering aspects of the valley, you may want to skip it. If you enjoy learning about people and having your ideas challenged, you may enjoy this book.
Thank you for this insightful review of Cheap Land Colorado. There are many layers to this narrative, both lived and perceived. I appreciate your analysis.