First, the river.

The opening words of "A Country Called Home" sprang into Kim Barnes' mind as she awoke one morning. She had been struggling between writing projects, searching for a story.

As she dashed down to her basement study to type the words, she knew she had found her next novel.

"Those three words, I had no idea where they would take me; I loved the way they sound. They were full of tension. They were already a narrative. "First the river." Well, then what?"

It is the "then what" that exhilarates and terrifies Barnes, an award-winning author. Adept at poetry, essay and memoir, she finds fiction particularly difficult, she said.

"In fiction, novels specifically, not only do I not know why my characters are doing things; I don't know what they're doing. I have to figure that out every day," she said.

"For the most part, in memoir you know what happened. That's not the point of memoir. The point of memoir is to explore why, and how we make sense of the what. In fiction, you don't know the what. But you learn to trust the process, to be OK with not knowing and to stare in the face of the blank page."

Barnes teaches writing at the University of Idaho alongside her husband, award-winning poet Robert Wrigley. They live deep in the wilderness of Moscow Mountain, where Barnes takes inspiration from the rugged terrain and the occasional bear visit or elk sighting.

"This is what makes my soul sing. It has to be genetic. I've spent time everywhere, from California to New York to Italy, and this is where I live at the bone. It's so deeply inside of me, I'm enmeshed," she said during a phone interview last week.

Barnes will tear herself away from her mountain to make an appearance in Boise next weekend for Rediscovered Bookshop's third annual "Baker's Dozen," a gathering of Idaho authors - including Mitch Wieland and Brady Udall, photographer Mark Lisk and graphic novel illustrator Steve Willhite - in celebration of National Novel Writing Month.

Barnes' novel, "A Country Called Home," (Anchor Books, $15) is the story of Thomas Deracotte, a headstrong individualist who falls in love with the beautiful Helen, who is born to a wealthy New Haven, Conn., family. The couple soon marry in a shotgun wedding. Determined to stake out their own place in the world, they buy a farm in Fife, Idaho, sight unseen.

When they find their fields near ruin, Thomas and Helen hire Manny, a young local, to help manage the farm in exchange for room and board. But Helen's terrifying childbirth changes something deep inside her husband, and Thomas begins to withdraw.

Helen is confined to their newly built house, caring for baby Elise. Shy and earnest, Manny watches this beautiful woman grow increasingly lonely and sad.

Their hesitant flirtation blossoms and grows until one afternoon, a devastating accident changes everything.

Barnes' book won the 2009 PEN Award for fiction; it is barnesandnoble.com's book-of-the-month for December.

The novel is set in the Clearwater Canyon, though Barnes calls it something else in the book. It is country she knows well. She grew up in the hardscrabble logging towns along the river, a free-spirited child until her family turned to Pentecostal fundamentalism.

That is the subject of her first memoir, "In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country," (Anchor Books, $15), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for biography in 1997. (Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes" won that year.)

Barnes is a complex woman, struggling with a legacy of her Oklahoma-raised parents, and her own desire to achieve in literary form.

"I often don't feel like I belong in either world; often I feel ashamed," she said.

Her childhood in Idaho and her relationship with her family still affect her work today, she said.

The driving force of Deracotte's character in this new novel is drawn from her father. Though their biographies are different, they share an "absolutist vision," she said.

"He thought he would come to Idaho, escape his past and make a new life for himself and his family, and there was no compromise.

"I'm very much informed by classical, Aristotelian tragedy, with its themes of the noble vision that is ruined by blindness (to its effects on others), and hubris. How that informs the life of the child born into it is very much what the book's about, and it very much informs my life."

Barnes' path to literary success was filled with obstacles, from the repressive family culture that taught her to be submissive, to a detour after high school when her father ejected her from the family and she had to make her own way. That derailed her plans for college.

"That was a very dark time," she said. "My hopes and dreams got wiped clean. I'd forgotten that I even wanted to be a writer."

It took several years to get back on track, which is the subject of her second memoir "Hungry for the World." Eventually, she enrolled at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, where she met Wrigley.

The story of their meeting will be the subject of a third memoir, she said.

In college she began to write again and rekindle her love of story.

Her trajectory moved from poetry to personal essay to memoir to novels, writing forms she interlaces with her lyrical style and epic approach to story.

"Personal essay is closer to poetry than prose. Often, when I'm in between things I will write a short personal essay because it brings my sensibilities of content and music together. Personal essay comes very natural to me. I feel this delightful pleasure inside that form. I find writing fiction is the hardest thing for me."

Still, when she delves into a novel, she tries to find moments when her lyrical sensibilities can shine but still honor the narrative form.

In "A Country Called Home," it is in the prologue where she lets herself go. It flows like a lyric poem, with musical descriptions of driving down dirt roads filled with potholes, breathing dusty air and being snared in brambles that spurn and envelop.

Her language echoes the beauty of the landscape that nurtured her youth with its beauty and continues to call her and inform her work, she said.

"The Clearwater Canyon, that is epic drama. If you're not careful, the river will flood and you will die. I love living at the brink of that everyday. I want it to be there for me but it's my choice whether or not to go to it.

"See, this is my father in me. You can be lost, but if you've been paying attention, you will survive. I love living at that point."

Dana Oland: 377-6442