3.5 stars ( )

I live a hundred miles north of Conover's story. He nailed the diverse group of characters living off the grid in remote areas of Colorado. Great story! ( )

And so I came, saw, and left, came, saw, and left, over and over again. I built a fence because it felt right, and because I plan to stay a while longer.

from Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover
When Ted Conover was eleven he visited the San Luis Valley on a family car trip. The land looked timeless, its long history of human settlement seeming to have little impact. Indigenous people left their rock carvings, Hispanic people created the first town. Pioneers came for the free land. Now, with some of the cheapest land on the continental United States, the valley still attracts people, the poor who dream of owning a plot of land, people who are drawn to the wide open skies, those who are escaping from the city and mainstream life or their past.

Ted Conover was hired to write a story about South Park and he shared what he had seen with his sister. She had visited the San Luis Valley and told him about a rural outreach group there. Conover visited to learn more. “I had not known that this kind of place existed,” Conover wrote about the off-the grid world he encountered.

Conover lived and taught in New York city but he arranged to work part time with the outreach group. He found a trailer and a place to park it. Every few months, he returned, traveling across the valley, seeking those in need, and learning about the people and their stories. He became a part of the community. He fell in love with this land, and bought land and developed a second home there.

Cheap Land Colorado is a wonderful portrait of this rural, impoverished valley and the people who call it home. With great humanity and acceptance, we come to understand people whose values and choices we don’t agree with or support. We see their dignity, their drive for self-sufficiency and freedom.

Conover himself is at the heart of the story, his growing attachment to the valley, the friends he made, the stories people told him. He sees first hand illegal guns, the impact of meth and opioids, mental health issues, and downright poverty. During the Trump years and Covid, he records their embracing of Facebook ‘truths’, too many becoming ill and dying because of pandemic denial.

“At a time when more and more people seem to believe that almost anything can be true, I wanted a book that could be fact-checked, populated by people who are indisputably real,” Conover concludes.

Thanks to A.A. Knopf for a free book. ( )