Used with author's permission. Photographer: Claire Barboza

Growing a Farmer: How I Learned to Live Off the Land.  By Kurt Timmermeister.  New York : W W Norton, 2011. 335 p.

Recommendation by:
Carolyn Petersen, CLRS Project Manager, Tumwater, WA.

This recent memoir reads like having an interesting friend sit down to relate how he made the intriguingly insane choice to change from being a city guy on Capitol Hill who ran a successful restaurant (He didn’t even know how to drive a car, let alone own one) to establishing and running Kurtwood Farms on Vashon Island—with no previous experience whatsoever as a farmer.  Each chapter details a new challenge in his life as a farmer. (Who knew that when  dairy cows are in heat they will try to mount anything—including the farmer leading them from one pasture to the next?) Kurt Timmermeister hopes by honestly sharing his struggles to produce quality products on a small 13 acre farm that consumers will appreciate even more the local produce that comes to market.

ISBN-13: 978 0393070859

Available at the Washington State Library,  NW 630.92 TIMMERM 2011
Available as an eReader edition.
Not available as an talking book, or as a Braille edition.

In times like these, folks need all the friends they can get.  That goes double for librarians who work in the state’s correctional and psychiatric institutions.  Since the 1960s when the U.S. government provided start-up funding to establish libraries in state institutions (ILS) ,  support for these critically needed libraries has plummeted.  As of October 2011, funding for the state’s ILS collections was terminated.

This crisis is not new to Gayle Shonkwiler, library associate at the Coyote Ridge Corrections Center.  She supervised school libraries at an elementary and high school in Pend Oreille County.  She learned early that if a librarian doesn’t have funds, that librarian better have friends.   Following the success of a 4-H fundraiser she managed, Gayle decided to write letters to popular writers.  Many writers were pleased to hear from a school librarian and they responded by sending small gifts of posters and bookmarks for her library.  Next she had to take the big leap.  She applied for a Dr. Seuss grant and won.  Her library and the whole school got involved with the fun.  Kids were served green eggs and ham in the cafeteria.  A reporter from the Newport Miner wrote a story when the school assembled for a Dr. Seuss birthday bash.  After, Gayle shared her grant writing success with the local county library. 

In response to the Coyote Ridge funding crisis, Gayle started a letter-writing campaign in partnership with ILS manager Laura Sherbo.  To date, Gayle has written to nearly 200 publishers asking for “in-kind” support.  Companies have shown themselves to be generous and supportive of small, struggling libraries.  Those companies include Orca Books in Canada.  The manager contacted Laura Sherbo and offered like-new books from their stock.  Copper Canyon Press of Port Townsend sent five boxes of poetry books.   The Gibbs Smith Publishers—a company that specializes in fun, whimsical books–sent enough books for every ILS branch.  HarperCollins shipped  J. A. Jance mysteries that are set in Washington State.  Hunter House sent books about domestic violence prevention.  The Parenting Press sent guidance books for children and adolescents. Bilingual Books of Seattle sent popular titles from their self-instruction inventory.   There are several boxes of books on the way from Sasquatch Books in Seattle. The National Ovarian Cancer Coalition and Pacific NW Chapter of Multiple Sclerosis Foundation sent several educational pamphlets. 

Librarians find out who their real friends are during hard times.  Thank you, Gayle. And thank you to the publishers who have responded so generously to the ILS program!

Breach of Duty: A J.P. Beaumont Mystery. By J.A. Jance. (New York: Avon Books, 1999. 384 p.)

Recommendation submitted by:
Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA.

This is mystery writer J.A. Jance’s 14th Seattle-based J.P. Beaumont police procedural. In it, Beaumont is investigating the arson murder of a woman whose death would not have been particularly noteworthy, if $300,000 had not been found hidden in an old refrigerator in her garage.

Meanwhile, a Native American woman, who happens to be a professor of physics at the University of Washington, shows up and warns Beaumont and his partner of a powerful curse. It seems that someone has stolen the bones of an important shaman and bad things start happening to those who handle them, as predicted.

Meantime the chief of police retires, and his replacement is a co-worker of Beaumont whose dislike for him is heartily reciprocated. Oh, and did I mention that Beaumont’s current partner, Sue Danielson by name, divorced mother of two, is worried because her deadbeat ex is coming to town?

Talk about a plot with lots of complications and disparate story lines! Jance weaves all of these lines together throughout various seedy locations of the greater Seattle area. For those who enjoy well-written – if slightly superficial – police-procedural style mysteries set in Seattle, J.A. Jance and J.P. Beaumont could easily become a habit!

ISBN: 0-380-97406-1

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 JANCE 1999.
Available in eReader, Braille, Large Type and Audiobook (Cassette, Digital Book) editions

The Washington State Special Collections contains nearly 600 distinct manuscript collections.  What unifies these collections is their focus on Pacific Northwest and Washington State history, but oftentimes the primary documents contained within each box has broader national or international appeal.

One example of this broader appeal is Washington State Library’s collection of Civil War veterans’ correspondence concerning attendance of the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg reunion, 1913 (MS 115).  Consider the following description, taken from the catalog record:

This fascinating collection also contains correspondence from the railroads for proposals with quotes on the cost of the transportation and descriptions of what would be included in the trip, a copy of the itinerary of the special train to attend the celebration, a list of the veterans in the train program, and a typescript of all of the veterans with their addresses that made up the Washington State delegation that attended the reunion.  A few of the items are facsimiles of material kept at the Washington State Archives, but most of the collection is made of originals.

As our nation commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and approaches the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the State Library is taking special strides to provide access to our Civil War-related materials.  Want to get a better look at this collection, or learn more about what the State Library has to offer war researchers?  Feel free to contact the State Library Special Collections or use the Washington State Library “Ask-a-Librarian” service for further information. Too far away to visit?  The library has recently scanned much of the related material to make it more readily available to researchers.

The Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was fought around July 1–3, 1863 and is considered by many the turning point in the Civil War.  For more information about the battle, the American Civil War, and Washington State’s Civil War veterans, please consider some of these links:

• US Civil War – Selected Resources at Library of Congress
• Civil War 150 – A commemoration by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
• The United States Civil War Center at Louisiana State University Special Collections
• Civil War Historians at Pennsylvania State University
• Civil War Trust
• WCWA: The Washington Civil War Association
• Civil War Veterans Buried in Washington State 

River Marked. By Patricia Briggs. New York : Ace Books, 2011. 324 p.

Recommendation by: Carolyn Petersen, CLRS Project Manager, Tumwater, WA.

River Marked is Patricia Briggs’ 6th Mercy Thompson novel. Fans of this “kick ass supernatural heroine” will be very pleased with this latest entry to her story. As the chief mechanic and owner of a car repair business in Richland, WA, Mercy would be unusual. However it’s her attempt to live as a solitary coyote shape shifter among a complex society of werewolves, vampires, and fae (faeries) all the while not attracting the attention of normal folk that make her life challenging.

As this book opens Mercy & her new husband Adam, the Alpha werewolf of Richland, are camping on the shores of the Columbia River on their honeymoon as a result of a wedding gift of a gorgeous camping trailer from the fae. Fairy gifts always come with complications–and this time it’s a doozy of a river monster. Mercy needs to call on her Native American heritage to survive this struggle. While this book can be read alone, readers who don’t know Mercy would be better served to begin with Moon Called.

ISBN-13: 978-0441019731

Available at WSL, NW 813.6 BRIGGS 2011
Available as an eBook.
Not available in talking book or Braille editions.

Title contains adult themes.

Hotel Angeline: A Novel in 36 Voices. New York, NY : Open Road Integrated Media, 2011. 256 p.

Recommendation submitted by:
Sean Lanksbury, NW and Special Collections Librarian, Washington State Library, and as a first foray into eBook reading . . . on a 9 cm smartphone screen, no less!

Thirty-six Pacific Northwest writers stepped into the Cabaret at Richard Hugo House to contribute a single chapter during The Novel: Live! – a week-long onstage writing event in front of a live audience and writing overlord/librarian Nancy Pearl. All the profits from the event benefited nonprofit organizations making a difference through literacy programs and support of the local arts.

In the end, Seattle’s Capitol Hill District plays canvas to this exquisite corpse of a novel, Hotel Angeline.  The story follows fourteen-year-old Alexis Austin, the daughter of an absent matriarch to a band of misfit progressives in a former mortuary converted into low-income apartments, and the trouble that they face after uncovering a plot to sell the hotel. As the plot progresses, the whorl of intrigue surrounding Alexis’ mother and long-gone father deepen and the heroine battles her own identity issues while she is forced to faster than she had anticipated.

You can sense that the deadline, structure, and subject matter forced many of the authors outside of their comfort zones. In the end the characterizations are pretty consistent and a solid and engaging – if sometimes overreaching – storyline emerges. There is plenty of each writer’s style present, while from chapter-to-chapter the narrative voice stays surprisingly consistent.  Not all chapters are created equal, and understanding the conditions surrounding the storytelling provides the reader insight necessary to appreciate the story’s many charms. Quite a feat, really.

One caution:  Despite the coming-of-age themes, this book is not necessarily intended for children or young teens, as there is plenty of adult language and subject matter in the story.

Chapter 1 / Jeannie Shortridge — Chapter 2 / Teri Hein — Chapter 3 / William Dietrich — Chapter 4 / Kathleen Alcalá — Chapter 5 / Maria Dahvana Headley — Chapter 6 / Stacey Levine — Chapter 7 / Indu Sundaresan — Chapter 8 / Craig Welch — Chapter 9 / Matthew Amster-Burton — Chapter 10 / Ed Skoog — Chapter 11 / David Lasky and Greg Stump — Chapter 12 / Kevin O’Brien — Chapter 13 / Nancy Rawles — Chapter 14 / Suzanne Selfors — Chapter 15 / Carol Cassella — Chapter 16 / Karen Finneyfrock — Chapter 17 / Robert Dugoni — Chapter 18 / Jarret Middleton — Chapter 19 / Deb Caletti — Chapter 20 / Kevin Emerson — Chapter 21 / Kit Bakke — Chapter 22 / Julia Quinn — Chapter 23 / Mary Guterson — Chapter 24 / Erik Larson — Chapter 25 / Garth Stein — Chapter 26 / Frances McCue — Chapter 27 / Erica Bauermeister — Chapter 28 / Sean Beaudoin — Chapter 29 / Dave Boling — Chapter 30 / Peter Mountford — Chapter 31 / Stephanie Kallos — Chapter 32 / Jamie Ford — Chapter 33 / Clyde Ford — Chapter 34 / Elizabeth George — Chapter 35 / Susan Wiggs

Available at WSL, NW 813.6 Hotel A 2011
Available as an eBook.
Not available in talking book or Braille editions.

Miss Harper Can Do It.  By Jane Berentson. New York : Viking, 2009. 324 p.

Recommendation by:
Carolyn Petersen, CLRS Project Manager, Tumwater, WA.

Debut novelist and Pacific Lutheran University graduate Jane Berentson follows the dictum of “write about what you know” when she sites her story in Tacoma.  (I live in Tacoma and this is the first novel I have ever come across that described the middle class Tacoma with which I’m familiar.  There have been crime or detective novels set there, but I don’t hang out in seedy bars or back alleys!)

Annie Harper is a third grade teacher whose boyfriend is deployed to Iraq at the beginning of the novel.  To get through the year without her boyfriend Annie decides to write a memoir which she daydreams will become a blockbuster best seller.  The titles change as her life and mood progresses. The first title is: Wartime Alone Time: When Abstinence Fights for Freedom.

This book manages to be warm, funny and bittersweet.  Annie and her supporting characters are engaging.  Her class is spot on which is maybe why School Library Journal gave this title a starred review.  Fans of women’s fiction will hope that this new author writes another book.

ISBN-13: 978-0670020775

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERENTS 2009
Available as an eReader and as a Talking Book on cassette or in a digital book edition.
Not available in Braille.

Other. By Karen Kincy. Flux. 2010. 326p.

Recommendation submitted by:
Jill Merritt, Library Associate, Washington State Library Branch Services, Tumwater, WA.

Readers of Twilight will find another set of characters to love in Karen Kincy’s new series.  The first in the series Other introduces a cast of teens that are pretty normal, except for one thing, they are “Other”.  Society knows about Others: shape-shifters, centaurs, vampires, and more… not all welcome them into town, however.  Some remain hidden, while others embrace their “otherness”, but it could get them killed.  Racism, sex, love, and murder will touch the lives of Gwen and her friends as a serial killer of Others hits their small Washington town.  Follow Gwen as she tries to solve the murder of her friends and accept her otherness.

ISBN 9780738719191.

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 KINCY 2010
Not available in Braille, Talking Book or eReader editions.
Title contains adult themes.

West of Here. By Jonathan Evison. Chapel Hill, NC : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2011. 486 p.

Recommendation submitted by:
Sean Lanksbury, NW and Special Collections Librarian, Washington State Library.

Jonathan Evison was awarded the 2009 Washington State Book Award (formerly the Governor’s Writers Awards) for his debut novel, All About Lulu. His second novel, West of Here, is an ambitious historical fiction that threads two eras of Pacific Northwest development together.

Set in the fictitious, but utterly recognizable Port Bonita, the filmic narrative cuts back and forth between the struggles  of newly arrived settlers and the native Klallam in late 1880′s Olympic peninsula and how their descendants face the present-day outcomes of their ancestors’ fears and ambitions.  Against a backdrop of a vast and indifferent wilderness, characters’ desires meet and crash against harsh truths as the many characters struggle to find themselves and their place within Port Bonita as the town first forms from a frontier settlement and more than a century later as it struggles to remain a community.

Fans of historical fiction will appreciatively debate the nod given to early journals of Olympic Peninsula exploration, particularly those of James Christie and the Press Expedition. Evison’s descriptive and modestly crafted prose will edge interested readers towards the novel’s conclusion.

ISBN-13: 978-1565129528

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 EVISON 2011
Available in eBook, Braille and digital talking book editions.

Lillian Walker, Washington State Civil Rights Pioneer: A Biography and Oral History. By Lillian Walker & John C. Hughes. Olympia, WA : Washington State Legacy Project, Office of the Secretary of State, c2010. 198 p.

Recommendation by:
Rand Simmons, Acting Washington State Librarian, Tumwater, WA.

“It was 1944, the apex of World War II, and on the home front the Navy was keeping an eye on its Negroes. Twelve hundred worked at the Bremerton shipyard, including 300 newcomers in the first eight weeks of the year. They were angry because many businesses, including cafes, taverns, drug stores and barber shops, displayed signs saying, “We Cater to White Trade Only.” One of the dissidents was 31-year-old Lillian Walker, whose husband worked at the shipyard. She was the recording secretary of the Puget Sound Civic Society, a civil rights coalition formed by the newly chartered Bremerton branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.” (Excerpt from Lillian Walker: Civil rights pioneer, John C. Hughes, http://www.sos.wa.gov/legacyproject/oralhistories/lillianwalker/default.aspx.)

This is the definitive biography of Ms. Walker, a civil rights pioneer in Washington State. It is both a biography and an oral history and eminently readable. Readers interested in race relations, civil rights history and the civil rights of African American women in particular will enjoy this book. This book is about the history of Bremerton, Washington and will appeal to those with an itch to read well written local history as well as to those who love to read biographies.

ISBN-13: 978-1889320229

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 323.092 WALKER 2010 / WA 353.1 St2lil w 2010.
Available in a Braille edition.
Oral history is available as a PDF edition. View online from Washington State Library.
Not available in talking book edition.