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  • Riverfront Times

    Where's the Beef?

    Allison Burgess stakes her reputation on mystery meat.

    By Aimee Levitt

  • City Pages

    Carp Killah

    Just in time for summer, it's again safe to fish with bows and arrows in Minnesota.

    By Bradley Campbell

  • Village Voice

    The Man in Our Mirror

    A black American's eulogy to Michael Jackson.

    By Greg Tate

  • Miami New Times

    Smoking Guns

    Miami's latest vice? Black-market cigarettes.

    By Tim Elfrink

Paradise Mislaid

Author uses wild horses as a metaphor for domesticated America

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By Clay McNear

Published on June 04, 2008 at 4:34am

We love the song “A Girl and Her Horse” by the band Carbon Leaf. Surfacely, it’s about . . . well, a girl and her horse. Subdermally, it’s a metaphor for loss. The same might be said of author Deanne Stillman’s new literary nonfiction work Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. A paean to paradise mislaid? Yes. A lot of other things, too, including a metaphorical indictment of our cultural choices? Yep.

Speaking of metaphors, Mustang returns its author to her overarching symbol: the American desert. Stillman’s been appropriately lionized for her instant classic Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave, but her book-length essay Joshua Tree: Desolation Tango is also worth a read.


Thu., June 5, 7 p.m., 2008