What is Olivia Hawker reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Olivia Hawker, author of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been on a huge Joan Didion kick lately. That started this summer while I was working on a new book for Lake Union Publishing. It’s set in the late sixties and early seventies, and it deals with two women in their late twenties who are feeling thoroughly dissatisfied with their lives. I wanted to understand what women of that age were thinking and feeling during that time, which was a strange gray area between the exuberance and optimism of the hippie movement and the cynicism that gripped America once Nixon’s misdeeds were exposed. The peace-and-love thing was just starting to die down and no one was sure yet what kind of culture would grow up out of all the shocking societal changes that happened in the early and mid-sixties. I figured the best way to find the right tone for my book was to read what women in their late twenties and early thirties were writing about during that time, which naturally led me to Joan Didion.

I started with Play It as It Lays, her 1970 novel about a woman struggling to navigate Hollywood culture and a rather grim marriage. It was dark and honest and weird—three things I absolutely love in fiction—and that...[read on]

About One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow, from the publisher:

Wyoming, 1876. For as long as they have lived on the frontier, the Bemis and Webber families have relied on each other. With no other settlers for miles, it is a matter of survival. But when Ernest Bemis finds his wife, Cora, in a compromising situation with their neighbor, he doesn’t think of survival. In one impulsive moment, a man is dead, Ernest is off to prison, and the women left behind are divided by rage and remorse.

Losing her husband to Cora’s indiscretion is another hardship for stoic Nettie Mae. But as a brutal Wyoming winter bears down, Cora and Nettie Mae have no choice but to come together as one family—to share the duties of working the land and raising their children. There’s Nettie Mae’s son, Clyde—no longer a boy, but not yet a man—who must navigate the road to adulthood without a father to guide him, and Cora’s daughter, Beulah, who is as wild and untamable as her prairie home.

Bound by the uncommon threads in their lives and the challenges that lie ahead, Cora and Nettie Mae begin to forge an unexpected sisterhood. But when a love blossoms between Clyde and Beulah, bonds are once again tested, and these two resilient women must finally decide whether they can learn to trust each other—or else risk losing everything they hold dear.

Visit Olivia Hawker's website.

My Book, The Movie: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.

The Page 69 Test: One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.

Writers Read: Olivia Hawker.

--Marshal Zeringue