The Cadence of Grass was published by Knopf in 2002. Sunny Jim Whitelaw, a ranching patriarch in Montana, dies and his will contains a poisonous provision: his daughter Evelyn can inherit the family’s bottling plant only if she remains married to her husband Stuart, whom Sunny Jim despised. If she divorces Stuart, the business goes to Stuart instead.
The novel follows the family’s response to this impossible situation: Evelyn, trapped in a marriage she wants to end; Stuart, suddenly empowered by a will designed to humiliate him; Evelyn’s sister Natalie, a recovering alcoholic whose instability threatens everyone; and Bill Champion, the ranch foreman with whom Evelyn is involved. The will becomes a machine that forces every character to reveal their true nature — their capacity for loyalty, vengeance, and self-interest.
McGuane’s late style is fully achieved here: spare, precise, simultaneously comic and melancholy. The sentences are shorter than in the early novels, the metaphors fewer and more exact, and the emotional register wider — encompassing genuine tenderness alongside the characteristic irony.
Collecting The Cadence of Grass
First edition (Knopf, New York, 2002): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$30
- Signed first: $30–$60
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Family and Inheritance
The dead patriarch’s will — requiring his daughter Evelyn to stay married to her worthless husband Stuart in order to inherit the ranch — is one of McGuane’s most inventive plot devices. It transforms a domestic comedy into a study of how money and property distort family relationships. Evelyn’s response (she tries to get Stuart killed on a backcountry horse trip) is both darkly funny and entirely logical within the world McGuane constructs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What role do horses play in McGuane’s life and fiction? McGuane is a competitive cutting horse rider of national standing. Horses appear in nearly all his Montana novels — not as scenery but as working animals requiring specific skills, patience, and physical courage. He writes about horses with the same technical precision that Hemingway brought to bullfighting.