Author Of Wolf Story Wants To Speak With ‘A Wild Heart’
When Somers, Mont., teacher/ writer ‘Asta Bowen first decided to write the story that would become her novel “Hungry for Home” (Simon & Schuster, 218 pages, $22), she wasn’t exactly an expert in wolf husbandry.
“I was neither a wildlife biologist nor an animal tracker, and as an outdoorswoman I was more enthusiastic than accomplished,” she declares in an author’s statement included in her book.
Yet when she pondered the struggles faced by the wolves that had been returned to Montana as part of the federal wolf recovery effort, she realized that this was a story she needed to tell.
Especially when she read in the Kalispell Daily Interlake about the death of one wolf in Mud Lake, and recalled a story about two others that had disappeared into the snowy wilderness one day trailing blood.
If nothing else, Bowen, who teaches English and creative writing at Flathead High School in Kalispell, wanted to find answers to some very pressing questions.
“Into what miserable death - or painful recovery - did that wounded wolf vanish?” Bowen wrote. “How many other shots did the poachers take and how many other creatures did they harass before heading back to their warm houses? Who or what killed the Mud Lake wolf? How many more would have to die before wolves would be allowed to return to their native land in peace?”
When Bowen reads from her novel in Spokane Monday night (see notice below), she’ll portray what she imagines the wolves’ struggle is like. Further, she’ll share what her intent was in putting it down on paper.
As she wrote, “I have tried to see the world through wolf eyes, to smell it through wolf nose, to feel it through wolf paws, and love it with a wild heart.”
Darden redux
If you never got around the reading “In Contempt,” Christopher Darden’s version of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, you might want to pick up a copy now that it’s in paperback (Harper Spotlight, 487 pages, $6.99).
Co-written by former Spokesman-Review staff writer Jess Walter, the book is still an intriguing - if ultimately laborious - look at this latest “trial of the century.” It also offers a new afterword, in which, among other things, Darden corrects the spelling of Walters’ wife - Our Generation editor Anne Windishar.
Assorted reads…
The journey of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark has been documented so many times that even a historian could be excused for losing count. Montana authors Donald F. Nell (a Bozeman historian) and John E. Taylor (a Helena gynecologist) have co-edited still another, this one titled “Lewis and Clark in the Three Rivers Valleys” (Patrice Press, 284 pages, $16.95 ISBN 1-880397-17-X).
Boasting 17 photographs, the book features the diaries of both explorers during their trek through the area defined by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison and Gallatin rivers.
We humans have a habit of trying to define ourselves, but it’s seldom an easy task. That’s primarily the purpose behind “The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 160 pages, $39.95 ISBN 0-8018-5431-8) by co-authors Terry G. Jordan, Jon T. Kilpinen and Charles F. Gritzner, who come up with some mighty general opinions.
“The West,” say the authors, “is at once indigenous and imported, innovative and ultraconservative, Anglo-American and ethnic, unitary and plural.”
“Very Close to Trouble: The Johnny Grant Memoir” (Washington State University Press, 223 pages, $17.95 paperback, ISBN 0-87422-139-0) is the memoir of one of the more interesting characters to survive the hard years of 1847-67 in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.
Edited by Lyndel Meikle, a ranger for the U.S. Park Service at the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site in Deer Lodge, Mont., the book includes Grant’s view on many of that era’s famous stories - including the vigilante hanging of Sheriff Henry Plummer and many members of his alleged gang.
In “Smoke Chaser” (University of Idaho Press, 353 pages, ISBN 0-89301-180-0), author Warren Yahr offers a readable memoir on the years he spent as a fire lookout in the remote Bungalow Ranger Station (28 miles from Pierce, Idaho, near the north fork of the Clearwater River).
“It was an isolated, lonely life and not for everyone,” Yahr wrote. “Some thrived on it; others couldn’t stand a week of it and came back in disgrace. It was a dangerous business, but being teenage boys, we couldn’t have cared less. Life always seemed a little sweeter when we risked it once in a while - or at least that’s the way we looked at it.”
The reader board
‘Asta Bowen, author of “Hungry for Home,” will read from her novel at 7:30 p.m. Monday at Auntie’s Bookstore.
John Dalmas, author of “The Bavarian Gate,” will read from his new science-fiction novel at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
Becka Rauve, winner of the inaugural short story contest sponsored by The Inlander, will read her story at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Auntie’s Bookstore.
Carol Buchanan, author of “Brother Crow, Sister Corn: American Indian Gardening,” will read from her book at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore.
, DataTimes