Synopsis
It is against the backdrop of these two competing visions of land and space that Donald Kueck - a desert hermit who loved animals and hated civilization - took his last stand, gunning down beloved deputy sheriff Steven Sorensen when he approached his trailer at high noon on a scorching summer day. As the sound of rifle fire echoed across the Mojave, Kueck took off into the desert he knew so well, kicking off the biggest manhunt in modern California history until he was finally killed in a Wagnerian firestorm under a full moon as nuns at a nearby convent watched and prayed.
This manhunt was the subject of a widely praised article by Deanne Stillman, first published in Rolling Stone, a finalist for a PEN Center USA journalism award, and included in the anthology Best American Crime Writing 2006. In Desert Reckoning she continues her desert beat and uses Kueck’s story as a point of departure to further explore our relationship to place and the wars that are playing out on our homeland. In addition, Stillman also delves into the hidden history of Los Angeles County, and traces the paths of two men on a collision course that could only end in the modern Wild West. Why did a brilliant, self-taught rocket scientist who just wanted to be left alone go off the rails when a cop showed up? What role did the California prison system play in this drama? What happens to people when the American dream is stripped away? And what is it like for the men who are sworn to protect and serve?
About Deanne Stillman
See more books from this AuthorStillman’s prose can become heated—the deputy “was blazing a path behind a badge and a wall of will”—but she does an admirable job building a full portrait of this beleaguered landscape by looking at individual characters, including Sorensen’s aggrieved fellow officers and the eccentric ruffians ...
Jun 15 2012 | Read Full Review of Desert Reckoning: A Town Sher...Soon, Stillman speculates, the building of the High Desert Corridor, a highway scheduled for completion in 2020, will âdrive the remaining castaways deeper into the desert...
May 07 2012 | Read Full Review of Desert Reckoning: A Town Sher...Deputy sheriff Stephen Sorensen was on his day off when he drove onto property in the Mojave desert owned by ex-con Donald Kueck, who shot and killed him, then vanished into the desert.
Jul 08 2012 | Read Full Review of Desert Reckoning: A Town Sher...In this true crime story, readers will learn about a crazy hermit who lived in the Mohave desert community of Antelope Valley in California, killed a well-liked sheriff, and was on the lam for seven days.
Sep 07 2012 | Read Full Review of Desert Reckoning: A Town Sher...this shines through when she discusses the synchronicities that guided her during the research and writing of Desert Reckoning — the mustang (subject of her 2008 book, Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West) that led her to Sorenson’s house, the Snake Fountain she happened upon ...
Aug 19 2012 | Read Full Review of Desert Reckoning: A Town Sher...An aggregated and normalized score based on 26 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes