From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian

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 

Wisdom of Elders: Traditional Food Ways of Five Tribes in Western Washington.  Recipes collected and cookbook edited by Melissa E. Christy.  (Phoenix, AZ : National Society for American Indian Elderly (NSAIE) ; Shelton, WA : South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency (SPIPA), 2008. 64 p.

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

The delight of this small book is that it provides glimpses into the history, culture, and daily living of the people of five Western Washington tribes. Reflecting the wisdom of elders from the Skokomish Tribal Nation, Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, Squaxin Island Tribe, Confederate Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation and Nisqually Indian Tribe, this small book is chocked full of recipes, ancient and modern, photographs, and remembrances provided by tribal elders.

Readers can learn how people preserved and cooked food when there were no refrigerators, freezers, microwaves or electricity. Basic information on Lushootseed, the Puget Sound Salish language, at the back of the book includes examples of pronunciation and phrases. Sound advice can be gleaned: “Cook while you are in a good mood and love who you cook for” – Tschudub Indian Shaker Church belief. Many of the recipes can made using common pantry items: flour, sugar, baking powder eggs and oil. For other recipes, you may need assistance gathering kinnikinnick berries and salmon eggs or making tuddee from fern roots. But if you have a penchant for geoduck patties, this book will provide you with the recipe.

Colorful photographs help identify what ingredients and finish foods look like. Yes, this is a cookbook but it is so much more. This book is ideal for the cook who is collecting Pacific Northwest cookbooks, for librarians who are selecting materials on the Pacific Northwest, for school librarians who need basic information on Indians of the Pacific Northwest for their students’ curricular needs and for the generally curious reader. A joint project of the National Society for American Indian Elderly (NSAIE) and the South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency (SPIPA) Wisdom of the Elders was produced with funds granted by the Administration for Native Americans as part of its Knowledge Preservation Project. Melissa E. Christy collected the recipes, edited the cookbook, and contributed photographs.

For more information on this project and the NSAIE , visit http://nsaie.org/projects/the-wisdom-of-elders-cookbook/

Available at the Washington State Library,  NW 641.5929 WISDOM 2008
Not available as an eBook, talking book, or as a Braille edition.

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.

Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America.  By Eric Jay Dolin. New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 442 p.

Recommendation submitted by Gordon Russ, Volunteer, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA

Mr. Dolin takes us on a journey, following the fur trappers west as America grows in size and maturity.  His story starts in the late 1500s with some of the early French explorers.  The fur trade really gets going in the 1620s with the coming of the Dutch settlers and their need for income. They start a vigorous trade with the Native Americans for beaver pelts, much desired in Europe.   The French and English quickly join the Dutch as they migrate to North America in search of new lands, religious freedom, and the need for income.  They too find the need to trade for the highly valued furs in the virgin lands.  The battle for Beaver pelts stirs much unrest between the home countries of these early settlers this leads to conflicts in Europe as well.

The fur trade moves west into the Great Lakes, up the Missouri river, into the Rocky Mountains, then down the Columbia River. Dolin takes us on an adventure: introducing us to the colorful people and characters of the of the fur trade such as Henry Hudson, John “Big Belly” Printz, John Jacob Astor, Christopher Hudson “Kit” Carson, Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, “Buffalo Bill” Cody and many others are introduced.  The book becomes a good primer of American History.  Dolin ties together those stories of our past and its people into a continuous thread of how we became who we are.

While the Beaver Fur trade and the genesis of America are percolating on the East Coast, the Spanish and Russians are not forgotten as they nibble away at the West coast in search of the Sea Otter.  All parties come together for the final confrontation right here in the Pacific North West.  As the battle for dominance of this new land rages, the participants drop out one at a time.  First, the Spanish leave, then the Russians and French, which leaves only the British and Americans to confront each other on the new frontier for the furs.  They discover they both have exhausted the Beaver, the Sea Otter and the reason they were there in the first place.  This leaves the land to those who wanted it – the Native Americans and the Americans, but that is another story for another time.

So sit back and wrap yourself in your favorite buffalo robe and enjoy a good read of adventure and riches.

ISBN-13: 9780393067101

Available at WSL, NW 381.4568 DOLIN 2010
Available as an eBook.
Not available in talking book or Braille editions.

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.

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian

Otherwise, you might end up with the sight you have before you: rotting timber, broken windows, and a sagging foundation.  Egads!  Long-time library volunteer Gordon Russ recently uncovered this undated image of Washington’s Territorial Legislative Building in disrepair while processing a portion of the State Library Special Collections.

The original capitol building was built for $5,000 appropriated by U.S. Congress as described in Section 13 of the Organic Act of 1853 and granted to newly appointed Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens.  Stevens used another $5000 to acquire volumes for the Washington Territorial Library and have them shipped to the new seat of government in Olympia, as described in Section 17 of that same document.

The building was never really finished to any condition that would be considered proper for housing government. The following description comes from “Historic Sites of the Washington State and Territorial Library: 1853 to the present”:

The building was built in 1856 on 12 acres donated by Edmund Sylvester. The new Legislative Building was described by historian Gordon Newell as a “wooden two-story structure that stood between where the present Legislative and Insurance Commissioner buildings now stand.” The building was hastily built and never really in an ideal state following its occupancy.  Reports of the era described it as a “sad picture of melancholy dinginess” [Ex. Doc. 144, 43rd Congress, 2nd Session] and “in a sad state of repair” [Smith letter, 1868.11.01] with worn out furniture; “faded, soiled, and ragged carpets;” and a rotting wooden block foundation that had caused the building to slope toward one end.   As described in 1874 by Henry J. Struve, Territory Secretary, the territorial Capitol Building was “left in an entirely unfinished condition” following its construction. He continues:  “The walls of the main chambers, committee rooms, library, entrance halls, &c., have never been lathed, plastered, or painted, and a portion of the same were and remain to this day, covered with rough, unplanned boards with a coat of common whitewash.”

Eventually the building proved too small and ramshackle to use.  The building served its original purpose until 1901 when the Legislature purchased the building that originally was built for use as the Thurston County Courthouse. The Library relocated to the Old Thurston Courthouse in 1901 and the Legislature moved in upon completing renovations in 1905.  The Territorial Legislative building was destroyed in 1911 to make way for the new Legislative Building designed by architects Walter Wilder and Harry White (now celebrating 100 years) , and the new Capitol Campus, as envisioned by landscape design firm Olmstead Brothers.

The former Thurston County Courthouse continued to house most of the state agencies until 1919. The Legislature met there until the present Legislative Building was completed in 1928.  That building was then kept to house the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and does so to this day.

Feeling inspired to do some research of your own?  Feel free to begin your search by using the Washington State Library “Ask-a-Librarian” service!

Grape Thief.  By Kristine L. Franklin. Candlewick Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2003. 290 p.

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

This charming tale revolves around Slava Petrovich, growing up in the coal-mining town of Roslyn, Washington in the 1920’s. Slava is nicknamed “Cuss” because he can do just that in 14 languages. Roslyn is a mix of ethnicities, which gives Cuss the opportunity to learn bits and pieces of many languages.

Cuss loves school, and even enjoys his seventh-grade opportunity to learn Latin from the local priest. But he’s definitely no sissy, and the book’s title comes from the fact that every year, Cuss and his friends scheme to “lift” boxes of grapes from the annual grape train that chugs into town from California.

When his older brothers have to flee due to a mix-up with mob-controlled bootleggers, Cuss and his family, headed by his widowed Croatian mother, struggle to survive. Will he be the first in his family to finish the eighth grade? Or will he have to go to work in the coal mines like his father before him?

Give this book a chance, and you’ll get caught up without realizing it. You’ll laugh, and you’ll cry, and the pages won’t turn fast enough. Described as a novel for young readers, this heart-warming tale will appeal to anyone from age 9 to 99.

ISBN: 0-7636-1325-8

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 FRANKLI 2003
Available as a digital book, a talking book on cassette and as a Braille edition.
Not available as an eBook

Note:  this book was re-released by Candlewick Press under the title “Cuss” in 2007.

The Garden That You Are.  By Kate Gordon. Winlaw, B.C. : Sono Nis Press, c2007. 192 p.

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

This is a lovely book. Perhaps I feel that because I am a gardener. I just spent an hour (or was it more) drifting through this book. Take the photos in first before you read the text. Gardeners love to talk about gardening – to anyone – but nothing is richer than gardeners talking to gardeners.

In The Garden That You Are, Kate Gordon opens a portal to the lives of eight gardeners in British Columbia’s Slocan Valley. Here we meet Edda West, Steven Mounteer, Victoria Carleton, Rabi’a, Brenda Elder, Gail Elder, Eliza Gooderham and Pete Slevin. They tell us about their gardens and their lives and how they are intertwined. We learn about “their favorite friends” calendula, cherries, kale, potatoes, hyacinths and more and about herbal medicinal and more. The photographs are engaging. I urge you to read this book. Go down the rabbit hole.

ISBN: 1-55039-160-7

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 635.0922 GORDON 2007

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.