Synopses & Reviews
Dogs, like humans, have memories, instincts, fears, and loyalties. But, as far as we know, dogs do not get swept up in nostalgia, speculation, or self-analysis. Although they have hopes, they are not driven by regrets. In
Crossing the Plains with Bruno, Annick Smith weaves together a memoir of travel and relationship, western history and family history, human love and animal love centering around a two week road trip across the Great Plains she and her 95 pound chocolate lab, Bruno, took in the summer of 2003. It is a chain of linked meditations, often triggered by place, about how the past impinges on the present and how the present can exist seemingly sans past.
Traveling from her rural homestead in Montana to pick up her nearly 100-year-old mother from her senior residence on Chicagos North Side and bring her to the familys beach house on a dune overlooking Lake Michigan, Smith often gets lost in memory and rambling contemplation. Brunos constant companionship and ever present needs force her to return to the actual, reminding her that she, too, is an animal whose existence depends on being alert to the scents, sights, hungers, and emotions of the moment.
Passing through wide open spaces, dying ranch towns, green cornfields, and Midwestern hamlets, Annick is immersed in memories of her immigrant Hungarian Jewish family, her childhood days in Chicago, her early marriage, and ultimate immigration west. Triggered by random encounters along the way, shes taken back to life as a young mother, her career as a writer and filmmaker who produced the classic A River Runs Through It, the death of her husband, and the thrill of a late romance. A lifetime of reflection played out one mile at a time.
Crossing the Plains with Bruno is a story narrated by a woman beset by the processes of aging, living with the imminent reality of a parents death, but it is the dog that rides shotgun, like Sancho Panza to Don Quixote, that becomes the reminder of the physical realities outside our own imaginations.
Review
Praise for Crossing the PlainsMy interest in Annick Smiths life was handsomely rewarded by this tender and perceptive book. A great woman, a great dog, and a road trip in the American West. How can you miss?” Thomas McGuane, author of Crow Fair
In Annick Smiths cross-country ramble with Bruno, we travel from Potomac, Montana, to Paris, from Sawyer, Michigan, to Transylvania as western, eastern European, and family history unravels in her road-weary mind. A delightful road log and reveriefascinating, funny, and poignant.”
Gretel Ehrlich, author of Islands, Universe, Home
Annick Smith writes with such deep intelligence, poetic sensibility, and generosity of spirit that I was entranced by her journey through loss and desire, hurt and hope, to the heart of what matters most: human connection, love of the land, and, through it all, the companionship of the dogs who grace our lives.” Kim Barnes, author of XYZ
"Annick Smith has written the best kind of memoir, alive with observation, reflection, humor, and the lifelong swirl of love and loss. Oh, and there's a dog. Many dogs. I cant wait to give this book to my family and friends.”
Beverly Lowry, author of Crossed Over: A Murder, a Memoir
About the Author
Annick Smith is a writer and filmmaker of Jewish-Hungarian descent whose work deals primarily with the literature and history of Montana, memoir, travel, and environmental issues. She has worked as a high school teacher, a book editor for the University of Washington Press, and an editor for the Montana Business Quarterly. She is known for her film credits, which include Heartland, co-producer of Robert Redfords adaptation of Norman Macleans A River Runs Through It, and associate producer of Peacocks War. Smith is a founding board member of the Sundance Film Institute and the founder of the Hellgate Writers, a literary center in Missoula. Her books include Homestead, Big Bluestem, and The Last Best Place, which she edited with William Kittredge. Her articles, poems, and stories have appeared in Audubon, Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Story, and elsewhere. She has lived in Montana since 1964.