Rose lives in the Mojave Desert. And near her childhood home of Pahrump, a solar array called Yellow Pine is going up. She joins a small group of protestors, fearing for the survival of the area and its wildlife, among other concerns. On the bright side, Rose is delighted that she and former partner, Miles, are giving love a second chance.
Such is the doom-and-swoon dynamic of Yellow Pine, the latest book by acclaimed author Claire Vaye Watkins that came out July 21. It's her fourth book, following her 2021 novel breakthrough, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, which is also set in the Mojave (and Reno).
Watkins, like Rose, also grew up in Pahrump. A UNR graduate and 2018 Black Mountain Institute Shearing Fellow at UNLV, Watkins' prose renders the desert not with the usual tropes of harshness and desolation, but with an eye for its vitality and beauty. It’s one of several reasons why critics regard her as an important voice of the American southwest.
"That's really been one of the animating energies behind my whole writing career is trying to insist that that land is not expendable, not sacrificable, and really, by extension, that none is," Watkins recently told KNPR.
The idea for the book is all in the title. Watkins heard about the real-life Yellow Pine solar array project in 2020 through the local nonprofit Basin and Range Watch. She had already suspected that any foray into alternative energy would see sun-kissed Nevada turning to its public lands. Isolated during the pandemic in nearby Tecopa, she decided to keep vigil — along with some like-minded friends — over the area.
"I started going out to the site before it was even stakes in the ground, and getting acquainted with it," Watkins said. "I really wanted to see what was there in case it did come to be transformed completely by the solar array, so I really wanted to learn it and to watch and see for myself what type of sacrifice that entailed."
She encountered a land that was "very, very alive" ... and wildlife that was clearly not. Specifically, she saw evidence that Mojave desert tortoises — listed by the federal government as a threatened species — had been relocated and then eaten by badgers, or doggedly returning only to starve outside the now-fenced-off site. Her recreation of this account is one of the novel's most heartbreaking passages.
But Watkins was not interested in a tragic story. Besides advocating for the majesty and health of the desert, her Rose is giddy about Miles' return; she even wants to have a baby with him. Her heart is filled with both anger and love — and, occasionally, irreverence, Watkins' flecking Rose's story with wit throughout the novel.
"I'm a big believer in the solace of beauty," Watkins said, adding that she used "feelings of impotence and rage and exasperation and despair, and over a long period of time and sustained focus, to make something beautiful and artful. And even sometimes it ended up being very funny and very silly; there's slapstick sequences and stuff. That was really important."
Watkins isn't just using the written word to demonstrate the beauty and ebullience of the Mojave. She's currently working on a documentary about the people and other life forms that reside along the Amargosa River — all also threatened by industrial development and mining — with filmmaker Matthew Crotty, titled Lower Hole. She hopes for it to be released sometime next year.
"As soon as it gets not-life-threateningly hot out there, we'll go back out there and do some more filming," Watkins said. "But we've got a lot of local artists and activists, and just like fun oddballs, and a lot of my neighbors are participating in it. It's shaping up to be a love song to the place."
Watkins will discuss Yellow Pine with local novelist Erin Singer on October 9 at The Writer's Block.
Claire Vaye Watkins, author
