Envisioning America

(I originally wrote this in 2008, but I like to pull it up from the archives every July as we approach Independence Day)

A few years ago, a friend asked me which book has had the most influence on my life. It's a tough question, but didn't take long for me to surprise her with my answer: The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This series of children's novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder's life with her pioneering family in the late 18oo's has had a lasting affect on my life even though I read them for the first time many decades ago. Part of the pull of this series, other than a most charming, independent, and resourceful heroine, is the portrait of early America that comes alive in its pages.

This Independence Day weekend seemed an appropriate time to focus on novels that, through the incredible research and imaginations of their authors, offer the reader a glimpse of what America may have been like in the early days of its settlement: the vast breadth of the landscapes, the wildness and danger of unexplored territories, and the complicated relationships among the people who loved it.

The Little House Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder

These novels are a joy to read at any age, but reading them as adults allows for so much more perspective on how courageous and resourceful and dedicated pioneers like the Ingalls family were to risk everything, including their lives, to have land to call their own. Each book is a short education in the daily rituals, traditions, housekeeping, and subsistence farming of the times. And Wilder describes landscapes and all aspects of nature as only one who has seen it herself can.

Thirteen Moons and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Thirteen Moons is the story of Will Cooper, an orphan and bound boy, who is sent west to the Indian territories in the Southern Appalachians to run a trading post. Cooper becomes intimately intertwined in the lives of the Cherokee tribe who adopt him and works tirelessly on their behalf to spare them from "the removal" ordered by the American government.

Cold Mountain takes place in the latter days of the Civil War. Inman, a wounded, southern soldier gone AWOL, tries to make his way home from the front lines to Cold Mountain and the woman he left behind.

Frazier has a remarkable talent for rendering the landscape of these novels in such a vivid way that the reader can practically see them. He also describes the daily lives, customs, work, and wardrobe of his characters, from the poorest Cherokee family to President Andrew Jackson, in details only possible through painstaking research. His characters are compelling and complex. He's just a great story teller.

The Living by Annie Dillard

This novel documents the settlement of the Pacific Northwest, in particular Whatcom County and the town of Bellingham, Washington. It traces the westward journey of several homesteading families as they travel to the recently opened Northwest. We learn of their hopes for the new land, the agonies and tragedies that beset them as they traveled, and what met them when they finally made it to the Pacific. Dillard's writing is more spare than Frazier's, but it rings just as true and, like his, offers a clearsighted glimpse of what the times and landscape were like during the era she writes about.

Ahab's Wife or, The Star Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

An epic that is hard to put down. Ahab's Wife is the story of Una Spenser, a 19th century woman who, in the course of her lifetime, escapes from a life with a violent father in Kentucky, lives with a freethinking family in Nantucket, runs away to sea disguised as a boy, survives adventure after adventure, and, indeed, eventually marries Ahab, the famous whale-obsessed captain of Melville's Moby Dick. Peopled with historical figures as well as a few characters from American literature, Ahab's Wife is a very long novel that is so good time just melts away as you read it. And, as with the other authors listed, Naslund has a gift of evoking the times and the landscape of both the mainland and the sea with extraordinary vision.

Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks

A fictionalized account of the life of Abolitionist John Brown narrated by his son Owen, the only survivor of the ill fated raid on Harper's Ferry West Virginia. Many historians believe Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry hastened the inevitable start of the Civil War. This is a very complex novel, and a long one, but it is absolutely compelling in its portrait of the controversial John Brown, its details about the era, and the questions it raises about the morality of espousing A Cause to the point of committing heinous acts (in Brown's case, murder) in support of it. As one review of Cloudsplitter put it, "This is the story of a rural family's wrenching transformation from anti-slavery agitators into political terrorists, and finally, tragically into martyrs."

Subduction by Todd Shimoda and L.J.C. Shimoda

There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.  -Patti Smith


***
As I pulled the shrink-wrap from Subduction, I spoke aloud to the mailbox : "Oh, I hope the story is as interesting as this book is beautiful!" I held in my hands A Book. The perfect rectangle of a thing with sharp, unbent corners; a silky hard cover with a softness, a smoothness that my fingertips glided right over. The title, Subduction, and the shared name of the writer and of the artist/book designer, Shimoda, are paired together boldly across the lower portion of the cover underneath an illustrated rendering of...what? A bird flying from sunlit clouds over the sea? A symbol of freedom? A central image from the story? Simple yet not simple, the cover alone is worth framing.

The pages are of sturdy paper, a pleasure to the touch. Each chapter contains artwork that reflects a moment from the story, a purposeful swirl of black ink over a photographed image or accompanying swirl of brick red on a white page, the back of which is fully red, the title of the image in white text along the bottom. The effect of the white edges of the pages interspersed with the thinner red lines is lovely.

Before reading the first page, I spent a good deal of time looking at the book, poring over the images and inspecting the 16-page insert, with watercolor illustrations, of the traditional Japanese folktale "Kashima and the Giant Catfish." But, finally, my curiosity couldn't wait any longer. I still wondered and hoped...

Will the story be as interesting as the book is beautiful?

Subduction is the tale of Endo, a young Japanese doctor who, taking the fall for a patient's untimely death, has been forced into professional exile on the tiny island of Marui-jima. The island is subject to frequent earthquakes and the government has ordered the residents to leave, but a handful of elderly islanders refuses to evacuate. Endo discovers, much to his relief, that there are two other outsiders on the Island. Aki is a seismologist researching his theories about earthquake prediction, and Mari is a documentary filmmaker hoping to understand why the residents refuse to leave. The islanders seem to trust Mari, but they believe Endo and Aki are government agents intent on enforcing the evacuation orders.

Endo feels the islanders' hostility from his first moment on the Marui-jima, and it increases by the day. He represents the modern world to them, a world lacking in tradition and loyalty, one that threatens their way of life. Earthquakes, struggle, and independence are much more preferable to them than government promises of safety and well-being. What Endo, Aki, and Mari first take to be the islanders' plain stubbornness is much more complicated than they imagine:  "'It comes down to what is the meaning of a life,'" says Yoshi, the only islander who will talk freely to Aki and Endo. "'I'm not referring to the meaning of life, but a life.'"

The lives of the islanders, as well as those of Endo, Aki, and Mari, are all measured by defining moments, by keystone stories that have shaped who they are at their very core. While Endo is spending his time drinking and trying to stave off boredom, Mari is collecting these stories and trying to make sense of how the individual lives of the islanders connect them to one another so tightly that they're willing to face earthquakes rather than be separated. Mari walks comfortably among the residents while Endo has run-ins with the old fishermen and Aki's equipment is sabatoged. Finally, shaken from his complacency by increasingly violent attacks against him and an unexplained death on the island, Endo knows he must fit the pieces of the puzzle together before it's too late.

Is the story as interesting as the book is beautiful? Yes, indeed it is. I read it after finishing a novel that I liked, but that was quite dense and "talky." Subduction is a tale, and I wanted a tale. A tale of mystery and suspense and beauty and multiple layers. You can read it as a straight mystery but, at the same time, this novel touches on so many facets of what makes us who we are. It makes us think about how how place defines us, how our own keystone stories shape us, how our community ties can both hurt and strengthen us, how we are alone and together in the choices we sometimes make.

Yes, Subduction is the whole package. It's a beautiful thing.

(You can read an excerpt from Subduction here and see the gallery of images from Subduction here.)

Confessions of a Book Pusher

There's no doubt about it. I am a shameless pusher.

As soon as someone shows the faintest hint that they might be wondering what to read next, I plunge right in with the book recommendations. One poor soul who mentioned on Twitter that he was in need of a book for his vacation was recently subjected to my super-helpful and personalized recommendations for several days straight. (Sadly, none of them hit home.) Recent guests were offered unsolicited suggestions whenever conversations touched upon a subject that matched my inner catalog of titles-for-every-occasion. (Success on that front: my copy of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand has found a new home.)

I've always believed that everyone can like reading; it's just a matter of finding the right book. It's not an issue of Good Books vs. Bad Books or Dead White Guy Literature vs. Pop Culture or Fiction vs. Nonfiction. A book must suit the personality and temperament of the reader. Sometimes it can be a hard slog for readers who have very definite tastes, but there is something out there for everyone. And there are book pushers like me around every corner just waiting to unite that perfect book with that perfect reader.