GOING-to-the-SUN

Rose Houk, with Pat O'Hara & Danny On. GOING-TO-THE-SUN: The Story of the Highway Across Glacier National Park. Robert White & Associates, 1984.

It's a slow start to 2025 as I'm reading a history text, so finding this booklet and another soup recipe book at the thrift store was a godsend. 

I have travelled this highway at least three times. The first time my father was the driver and even he was scared. One of the first poems I wrote, "Montana High", was about the second crossing. 

This brief history of the visioning, funding, and construction of this high mountain road is impressive. Black powder was used to blast the mountains. The "sappers" placing the powder worked in their sock feet, because the hobnails on their workboots could spark and ignite everything. There were only 3 deaths of workers reported, but many many more resignations, bowing out while they still could.

The opening celebrations, on July 15,1933, included a "burying of the hatchet" peace pipe ceremony involving three First Nations.

The LONELY HEARTS HOTEL

Heather O'Neill. THE LONELY HEARTS HOTEL. HarperCollins, 2017.

I am so glad I found this novel at a thrift store. And it has a lovely French-fold cover and wonderful "hand", the way it feels like leather/velvet to the touch.

This is a love story between two exceptional children, Pierrot and Rose, who meet in the orphanage. They are both imaginative and creative and love to perform. Set in Depression-era Montreal with a season in New York, the protagonists experience abandonment, abuse, poverty, addiction, prostitution, pornography, and criminal associates. 

I loved O'Neill's Lullabies for Little Criminals. This novel has the feeling of an earlier work, less revised or edited, with the same exceptional figures of speech which, as the protagonists age, seem to better fit the character's experiences. A most enjoyable read. 

KEEP IT REAL

Lee Gutkind, ed. KEEP IT REAL: Everything You Need To Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction. Norton, CNF, 2008. 

Best birthday present ever. And it solved the problem I was struggling with, on a piece of nature writing that just was not working. Change the opening, from description to "a scene".

The GREY WOLF

 Louise Penny. The GREY WOLF. Minotaur, 2024

Borrowed from a friend who had borrowed it from the library. No due date, making reading it so relaxing. Except that Louise Penny is one of those writers who keeps me up all night reading. This one is especially complicated, with settings ranging from Montreal, Ottawa, Three Pines, the monastery, the Labrador Coast, Isle de la Magdelan, Chicoutimi, Washington, DC, Paris, Rome, and the Chartreuse monastery. The plot is equally as complicated. 

HOW to AGE DISGRACEFULLY

 Clare Pooley. HOW TO AGE DISGRACEFULLY. Penguin, 2024

A holiday book club selection. Amusing. I copied some lines that made me laugh out loud. It took me a while to get into it. I felt no empathy for the two main characters. Daphne was rude which to me is not the same as funny. And Art is delusional about career and self. The writer eventually gets to the info that helps us understand. One takeaway: every senior needs a techie on call. 

HELD

Anne Michaels. HELD. Penguin, Random House, M&S, 2023.

Winner of the Giller Prize for fiction, 2024. I bought this book because I felt guilty, having tried and never succeeded to get into her first novel, FUGITIVE PIECES. I will read it now.

HELD is like reading a novel-length poem. The Table of Contents is helpful because it forewarns the reader that the time line is not linear--from 1908 to 2025. At first there seem to be no recurring characters but certain objects seem to be passed down from earlier generations. 

I read the whole novel aloud, just for the sound and the rhythm of it, and the giant challenging vocabulary. 

Characters include returned soldiers, photographers, musicians, scientists including Marie Curie, suffaggets, and contemporary lovers.

Sometimes there was a bit too much abstraction--seemingly living inside someone else's head. But that's just me. 

MOON OF the TURNING LEAVES

 Waubgeshig Rice.  MOON of the TURNING LEAVES. Random House, 2023.

A dystopia, set twelve years after the power went out, with small bands of Indigenous people living together and realizing they have to move if they are going to be able to feed themselves.

The group, 15-year old Nangohns, Elder Evan, JC, Cal, Amber, and Tyler set out to discover what lays beyond, looking for the land on the north shore of the big lake where their people were once from. The pace is slow, matching the speed of their walking. They stick to abandoned roads when they can, not knowing what they will encounter and if they will be safe. They manage their affairs by consensus, deferring to those with experience, with gender and non-binary equity, remembering to give thanks, make offerings, respect the help from the ancestors. They encounter good and bad people.