The Sisters Brothers. By Patrick deWitt.
New York: Ecco, 2011. 328 p.

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

In The  Sisters Brothers author Patrick deWitt has produced a darkly comic tour of the Old West. Brothers Eli and Charlie Sisters are hit men who work for an enigmatic boss.  The story begins in 1850’s Oregon City when the brothers receive orders from the “Commodore” to kill a man who is working a mining claim outside of Sacramento.

As they journey to find this man, they encounter a witch, a bear, a parlor full of drunken floozies, and a gang of murderous fur trappers.  These encounters allow deWitt to explore the human costs of the clichés of the Old West. This revisionist and subversive western tale received much critical acclaim.

ISBN-13: 978-0062041265

Available at WSL, NW 813.6 DEWITT 2011
Available in talking book or Digital Book editions.
Not available in a Braille edition.

Title contains adult themes.

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.

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.