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

To Build A Ship. By Don Berry.
Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 2004
(Copyright 1963, by Don Berry and first published by Viking Press)

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

There are only a few settlers living in the Tillamook area as this story unfolds, but already they have a real problem. There’s no way in or out. No way to get their supplies in, or their produce out. They are isolated by mountains and forest. There are no roads, just trails, suitable for a man and a horse, but not for hauling supplies or goods. The only practical way in and out is by sea. And now the one and only sea captain who has been willing to cross their perilous bar and visit them once a year, has died.

So, they decide to build their own ship. That endeavor soon captures all of them – heart, mind and soul. Except for their shipwright, a strange and tortured creature who causes trouble when he falls in love with one of the Indian women.

Through this seemingly small crack, evil manages to pry its way into the story, leading to a chilling denouement midway through, providing an unwelcome stress point near the center of the tale which functions in the novel much like the pass over the coastal mountain range, which must be surmounted whenever anyone travels from the Tillamook country into the central Oregon valley, or vice-versa. This unwelcome bit of byplay, in which the Indians naturally come out suffering the worst, only serves to emphasize even more strongly the overwhelming nature of the hold the idea of the ship has over all of them.

This is the third segment in Don Berry’s masterful trilogy exploring the early era of Oregon history, centered around Tillamook. I’ve already written about the first two, Trask and Moontrap, respectively. This is the final chapter, and what a masterpiece! This is the best yet: a more powerful or effective novel has rarely been written. Highly recommended!

ISBN: 0-87071-040-0

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERRY 2004
Available as a talking book on cassette.
Not available as an eBook or Braille edition.

Moontrap. By Don Berry.
Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press, 2004
(Copyright 1962, by Don Berry and first published by Viking Press)

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

In Moontrap, the second book in author Don Berry’s trilogy depicting the early history of Oregon, we encounter two mountain men, Johnson “Jaybird” Monday and Webster W. Webster, “Webb” to his friends or compatriots. Monday is trying to settle down, staking a farming claim on land along the Willamette, just across from Oregon City, the first important Oregon settlement. Just as he’s beginning to think that maybe he can learn how to fit into “normal” society, along comes old Webb, riding his equally old and bony horse, still living his mountain man lifestyle, camping along the edges of society, with no use for towns, or any of the other trappings of civilization.

That Monday lives with his common-law wife, Mary, a Shoshone Indian woman, who is about to bear his first child only adds to his difficulties integrating into “civilized” society. Her presence does not sit well with powerful and bigoted men who apparently control the destiny of the region. When Monday discovers that the judge won’t record the name of his son as Webster Monday, but insists on writing out the birth certificate as:

Father: Johnson Monday, White.
Mother: Mary Deer Walking, Shoshone Indian.
Child: Webster, son of Mary Deer Walking. Shoshone Indian. Bastard.

He knows that nothing can ever change: once a mountain man, always a mountain man.

In these first two books of the trilogy, Trask and Moontrap, Berry wrestles with the question of what happens to the mountain men when they reach the final frontier. Once the Oregon territory is settled, and the United States reaches to the Pacific, what is left of the old way? The old way that saw the mountain men living with the same freedom as the red man is finished, done for, obsolete.  Just as you cannot trap the reflection of the moon in a moving pool of water, so you cannot preserve the freedom of the old ways.

ISBN: 0-87071-039-7

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERRY 2004
Not available as an eBook,talking book, or as a Braille edition.

Essential wines and wineries of the Pacific Northwest : a guide to the wine countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and Idaho. By Cole Danehower ; photography by Andrea Johnson. Portland, Or. : Timber Press, 2010. 308 p.

Review submitted by:
Rand Simmons, Acting Washington State Librarian, Tumwater, WA

Whether you’re simply curious, an aspiring wine connoisseur, or an aficionado, you will be charmed by this book. It is a solid book, 308 pages, and worth a first reading for the photographs and captions alone. It is a travelogue through the wine countries of Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Idaho. It is a curriculum on the geography, geology climatology and edaphology of the Pacific Northwest and yet it is not academic.

The text is readable and interesting. Articles such as “Surviving Disaster Together” (p. 52), “Sustainable Viticulture,” (p. 143) and “Biodynamic Wine” (p. 134-135) tell the story of growing grapes and making wine in our corner of the world. Each state or province section begins with a wine country at a glance section for ready reference and each wine country (DVA or designated viticultural area) has the same. “Wineries and Wines to Sample” provides the stories of 160 wineries of the more that 1,000 wineries of the Pacific Northwest.

As a reference source, the book includes a glossary, list of wine grape varieties grown in the Pacific Northwest, a bibliography and an index. Missing from the index are references to towns and cities to which the wineries are attached. The book is not a hardback but is pleasingly flexible and easy to handle. At $24.95 this is a good choice both for libraries and the individual reader.
ISBN-13: 978-0881929669

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 641.2209 DANEHOW 2010
Not available in Braille, Talking Book or eReader editions.

The Big Burn : Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America. By Timothy Egan.
Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009. 324 p.

Recommendation by:
Carleen Jackson, Director, Heritage Center, Olympia, WA.

I recommend this wonderful history of a huge fire that destroyed much of the newly designated National Forest land in 1910.  Equally fascinating is the story of how the US Forest Service got its beginnings through the work of Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.  Although most of the fire destroyed lands in Idaho and Montana, Washington State also figures prominently in the story.

The best thing about the book is that it reads almost like a novel, although it is historically correct.  Egan tells the story through the true-life characters: Familiar names such as Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft.  He also includes the lesser-known people:  railroad tycoons, brothel and tavern keepers, newly minted forest rangers, and men and women who fought the fire.  This fire set the precedent for the long-standing policy of the Forest Service to aggressively fight fires, rather than manage them as the Native Americans did.

Timothy Egan is also the author of The Worst Hard Times about the dustbowl in the Midwest, and The Good Rain about his travels around Washington State.

ISBN-13: 978-0618968411

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 973.911 EGAN 2009.
Also available in talking book and eBook editions.
Not available as a Braille edition.

Trask. By Don Berry.
Oregon State University Press, 2004. 348 p.
(Copyright 1960 by Don Berry and first published by Viking Press)

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

Mountain man Elbridge Trask, living in the Clatsop area in the 1840’s, has a hunger for even wilder, less settled areas. He plans a trip down the coast to the area inhabited by unfriendly natives, the “Killamooks” as Tillamook, Oregon, was typically spelled in those early years.

But the real story is Trask’s inner life, compellingly imagined by author Don Berry. Trask barely knows his own mind at times, is unsure of what he wants, at least on a conscious level, but his heart leads him inexorably onward towards his fate. While at times beset by doubts and inner turmoil, he never hesitates when making the most crucial decisions, and at times, speaks almost without thinking, yet expressing his deepest desires.

Also significant is Trask’s relationship with his partners in travel, two Clatsop Indians, one young and untested and the other, Charley Kehwa, is a tamanawis man, one who has visions or dreams of a supernatural nature. Trask is too hard-headed to believe in such things, but is affected by them all the same.

Berry followed Trask with two more novels, Moontrap and To Build a Ship.  These three tales “form a loose trilogy that tells the story of [Oregon’s] origins better than any history book”, according to the book’s introduction.  This first volume is a tour-de-force and a powerful, impressive narrative.

ISBN: 0-87071-023-0

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 BERRY 2004
Also available as a talking book on cassette.
Not available as an eBook or as a Braille edition.

D.B.: A Novel. By Elwood Reid.  New York : Doubleday, 2004.  356 p.

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

If you were alive in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970’s, doubtlessly you recall the high altitude heist of D.B. Cooper.  I lived near Camas, Washington, supposed drop point of our region’s most notorious skyjacker.  My friends and I playacted endless what-if scenarios involving Cooper that often included a Sasquatch (because what northwest kid wouldn’t add a bigfoot?) for good measure  in the forests of Southwest Washington for hours on end.

So what if “Dan Cooper” actually made off with the $150,000 that didn’t wash up on the shore of the Columbia River? D.B., by Elwood Reid, imagines the back-story and the aftermath of Cooper’s heist, from Cooper’s perspective, as a soft-boiled satire for the changing definition of gender and responsibility in the late twentieth century.  The plot follows the story from Cooper’s perspective as he plans the heist and deals with the consequences and costs of his crime and exile.  A parallel plot follows a recently retired Federal Bureau of Investigation investigator – originally assigned to the case – who now reflects on his career and evaluates his life and relationships as he heads into uncharted personal realms.

Author Reid’s tight, readable style makes for a clever piece of speculative fiction that mixes dark comedy with unsentimental reflection on modern masculinity.

ISBN-13: 978-0385497381

Available at the Washington State Library, NW 813.6 REID 2004.
Not available as an eBook, talking book, or as a Braille edition.
Title contains adult themes.