"Sheep Reads" Festival Book Club

Featured Book - Sweet Promised Land by Robert Laxalt

Saturday, October 7, 2023
9:30-10:30am
Town Center West
116 S. River Street, Hailey
FREE!
(NOTE: This event is FREE but we ask that you pre-register so that we can correctly set-up the venue for seating. Coffee will be provided.)

Pick up a copy of "Sweet Promised Land" this summer and finish it before joining us for this Book Club discussion on Saturday morning of the Festival. Diane Peavey, Festival co-founder and author, will lead the conversation. (For the locals, books are available to borrow from the Hailey Public Library and The Community Library in Ketchum. But, once you have read this beautiful book, you will wish you had bought your own copy to read again and again. It is the quintessential story of how our rugged western landscapes became home not only to so many Basque, Scottish and Peruvian sheep men and their families, but all of us who came from elsewhere and now cannot imagine life without sweeping western landscapes.)

Image of cover of Sweet Promised Land - Laura Drake

BOOK SUMMARY:
Dominique Laxalt was 16 when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France. Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.