Category Archives: publishing

Kate Belt’s Monday Book: MINK RIVER

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The message from Wendy contained not another cat video, but an invitation to write a Monday Book column while she labors to birth her own new book. We temp reviewers like me (I’m a reader not a writer) move everyone closer to a new book by Wendy. I get to introduce Brian Doyle to Wendy’s reading community. Win-win!

The Monday Book is Mink River. I suspect few have heard of Brian, but who can watch this eight minute clip, which also includes exquisite Oregon scenery, and not love him immediately? http://watch.opb.org/video/2365599863/

 

Brian has prolifically published five novels, books of prayers, poems, essays, children’s stories, and a fun read about Oregon Pinot Noir. Of his novels, Mink River ties with Martin Marten as my favorite. Sadly, there will be no 6th because Brian died of brain cancer last year at age 60, not long after his diagnosis. It’s a devastating loss to his readers and loved ones.

Any one, every one of his novels is worthy of the Pulitzer or National Book Award, but inexplicably he is little known outside of the Pacific Northwest.

 

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Mink River is a fictional town set on the Oregon Coast. It’s a slice of life book about life in community. It is about us, us Oregonians, Pacific Northwesterners, Westcoasterners.  We are loggers, fisherfolk, conservationists, farmers, tree huggers, artists, poets, and priests, and teachers, and doers of public works.

There’s Moses, the crow, who makes the town’s business his business. He helps save people when he can and gives them his presence when he can’t. It’s not a mystery story, but there is a mystery and Moses helps solve it. There’s a nun who is dying, and there are two men who work for the Department of Public Works, defining their job as doing good works for the public. They wander around watching for opportunities to provide assistance, such as giving haircuts. It’s also about time, in a metaphysical way you’ll just have to read for yourself. And then there is Blake. You’ll find instances of the poet William Blake throughout the story.

The book reminds me of everything I loved about my Oregon home in Portland for over 20 years. Its essence will remain with me always. Doyle has captured its flora, fauna, and people, tatting us across time in this powerfully written novel. Everything Brian wrote reflects an awe and reverence for creation and The Creator. His eye seemed to observe everything, missing nothing. He called Mink River a love song to Oregon and Martin Marten a love song to Wy’East, the original Native American name of Mount Hood. The absolutely exquisite writing flows lyrically, drawing me into Brian’s current, making me want to let myself go and float along inside the story. Brian’s disdain for punctuation contributes to this, though it made his editors crazy! As for me, I become the salmon swimming upstream to spawn, the old man climbing the mountain in search of time.

Here’s one more link, one of many tributes to Brian after his death: http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2017/05/brian_doyle.html

These Boots were made for Writing?

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26943464_1870425129635209_1410684589_nAbout this time last year, my friend Cami Ostman and I were tucked up four days near Naples, Florida. We’ve been friends since we were about 18, and writing buddies about ten years.

When I sold my writing cabin in Tennessee, we lamented that our usual retreat couldn’t happen, holed up with pre-made casseroles and wine, knocking out our latest narratives and reading them to each other to smooth the rough edges. Cami and I both find that drafting a book’s bones is best done in an intense huddle of anti-social time hoarding. To everything there is a season, and when writing time gets smooshed between all the other pulls of normal life, it gravitates toward the back burner. Better to start the year with a dedicated blast, upping the stakes to keep going.

Cami wondered it it were a plot for a horror novel when I sent her this message: “I’m sure there’s some nice person out there who’s read one of your books or mine, who’s got a she-shed or a rental property we could borrow for a week. Lemme ask.” But the response from Cynthia Piwowarczyk and her husband Jim sounded like heaven. She was a voice-over actor, he director of a non-profit. Two spare bedrooms, a pool in the backyard, a few blocks from a running trail around a lake, and don’t bring any wine or snacks because her husband’s job meant he had about a hundred gift basket items left over from Christmas, and they didn’t drink.

Cami messaged me: either this is set-up for the scariest movie ever, or we just hit the jackpot. Indeed we had. The worst moment of that time with the sweetest, smartest couple in the world was trying to spell their last name on the thank-you card.

We followed our usual pattern: three days of intense writing, emerging evenings to socialize (read: drink wine) and chat with the couple. And then a day of gleeful reward: Cynthia took us to the beach for the morning, and arranged to meet us in the afternoon for girl time. We got frozen ice juices, we ate crepes, we went shopping.

Cynthia and I shared a penchant for thrift stores, so left Cami in a cafe with her laptop to careen through a few big places, chatting and impulse buying and talking each other into and out of silly things.

Mindful that I’d flown with hand luggage, when I first saw the boots, I passed. But Cynthia had a good eye. The second time she saw me glancing back, she asked, “What? Those plaid waders?”

My guilty secret came out: I’d always wanted a pair of decorative gum boots, Scottie dogs or polka dots or some such. Cyndi studied the red and yellow lines of the pattern. “I don’t think it gets any more decorative than this, dear.”

So I flew home from Florida with second-hand knee-high rubber boots stuffed into my bag, dirty knickers stuffed into the boots. Security waved me through after one disgusted look. The officer changed her gloves.

And for a year, those boots sat in the back of my closet, because winter was mild and summer was dry in Southwest Virginia. They survived several closet purges and a Maria Kondo phase, because they brought me joy. Even if I never wore them, now I had a pair of cool hipster knee-highs.

Fast forward to the invitation to be writer in residence in Fayette, West Virginia from January-March of this year. As David, a long-time friend said, “You want to go where, WHEN?!”

I arrived when the weather had reached -4 just from temperature, windchill dropping it another few degrees. People were warned about freezing times of exposed flesh. No one was driving–except Amy and Shawn, owners of the flat that sponsored the residency. They took me on a scenic tour of the New River Gorge in their jeep. Nobody out there but us and one lone runner we encountered at the bottom. He stared at us like we were crazy.

And for the next three weeks, any time I stepped outside the apartment, I needed the boots. At last. I packed them more as a memento of the previous year’s week of glorious productivity, but also they were the only weather-proof shoes I owned. I tend to be a minimalist footwear girl.

So I guess these boots are now a connective theme. Next year, if I get the residency I’ve applied for in Yellowknife (yes, in the cold part of Canada) they’ll get use again. Meanwhile, they’ll sit in the back of my closet, a reminder that, to everything there is a season.