Mid-Summer Book Report: Child Brides, French Dirt, Norma Paulus

All it took to breeze through three-and-a-half books was a week spent in a rustic cabin on Mt. Hood accompanied by a spate of cooler-than-normal weather that "forced" me to spend more time indoors than out. Yes, we got out for hikes, but then retreated to the comfort of books and coffee and lapdogs.

The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect, by Daphne Bramham, is an exposé of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), "one of the largest of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy" (Wikipedia). Bramham, an award-winning journalist and author (as well as a personal friend), has been doggedly reporting on this cult for the Vancouver Sun for the last 15 years.

Starting with a history of the sect when it broke away from the mainline Mormon church (the Latter-Day Saints or LDS) when the LDS banned "plural marriage" in 1904, Bramham traces the evolution of the FLDS—with settlements in Utah, Arizona, British Columbia, Colorado, Texas and South Dakota, all governed by a self-proclaimed "Prophet"—to the 2007 trial and conviction of one of those prophets, Warren Jeffs, for being an accomplice to the rape of an underaged girl.

At the time of the book's publication in 2008, Bramham wrote:

"Prophet Warren Jeffs controls every aspect of the lives of more than eight thousand people, from where they live to whom and when they marry. Jeffs has banned school, church, movies and television. He has outlawed the colour red and even forbidden his followers to use the word "fun." Along with his trusted councillors, Jeffs has arranged and forced hundreds of marriages, some involving girls as young as fourteeen and men as old as or older than their fathers and grandfathers. Many of the brides have been transported across state borders as well as international borders with Canada and Mexico."

A page-turner, it chronicles the dangerously wacky, power-hungry men who turn a so-called religion to their own ends, damaging the lives of gullible men, women and children in the process. Bramham doesn't spare criticism of government officials of both countries for taking an infuriatingly hands-off approach to the commonly acknowledged abuses happening right under their noses. It's a gripping story, well-told and thoroughly documented. Highly recommended.

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For something completely different, French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, by Richard Goodman, begins with the author recalling how, as a 20-something aspiring writer, he was presented with the following classified ad by his Dutch girlfriend: "SOUTHERN FRANCE: Stone house in Village near Nimes/Avignon/Uzes. 4 BR, 2 baths, fireplace, books, desk, bikes. Perfect for writing, painting, exploring and experiencing la France profonde. $450 mo. plus utilities." With the adventurous spirit of youth, they rent the house for a year and move to a small village where Goodman is moved to start a garden on a small patch of ground loaned by a villager.

Far from the cutesy tales told of the quaint inhabitants of small villages in France or Italy—Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes being perhaps the best-known practitioners of the genre—this is the story of a young man falling in love with a garden and learning about himself in the process. Charming and well-told, it even received the unsolicited imprimatur of none other than M.F.K. Fisher herself:

"I possess a deep prejudice against anything written by Anglo-Saxons about their lives in or near French villages, especially in Provence. I really cannot stand the lip-licking enjoyment of local peasantry by these visitors from America and England. So, Richard, I thank you for breaking the spell. I like very much what you wrote. It did not sound supercilious at all. All my best always, M.F.K. Fisher"

I couldn't agree more.

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The Only Woman in the Room: The Norma Paulus Story by Norma Paulus with Gail Wells and Pat McCord Amacher, startled me on many levels. As a native Oregonian who lived through the years covered by this biography and knew many of the names and issues described in it, I was fascinated to learn of the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing involved in some of the biggest headlines—think the bottle bill, saving Oregon's beaches for public access, the Land Conservation and Development Commission, which baked land use planning into our way of life—as well as more personal insights into pioneering Oregon luminaries like Tom McCall, L.B. Day, Betty Roberts and Gretchen Kafoury.

The book recounts that Paulus, a representative of a more moderate Republican party than we know today, and many in her party were pro-environment, advocated for women's rights—Oregon ratified the Equal Rights Amendment not once, but twice—and helped give Oregon its (now sadly diminished) reputation as a bastion of progressive government.

As the first woman elected to statewide office, as Secretary of State in 1976, Paulus was a practical yet visionary leader in her public career, though her dream to become Oregon's first woman governor was dashed in a bitter (if close) loss to Neil Goldschmidt in 1986; Barbara Roberts was to earn that distinction in 1991.

A chronicle of Oregon politics during a critical time in our history as well as the remarkable personal story of a woman's growth from humble beginnings to acclaim on a national stage, this is good read for longtime and newer Oregonians alike.

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In case you're counting, the other (half) book, which I'd started before we arrived at the cabin and finished soon after, was the excellent Raw Material: Working Wool in the West by Stephany Wilkes, reviewed here.

Summer Book Report: Two for Two!

A recent week at the beach gave me the opportunity to get off the computer and away from the "to-do's" at home and actually sit down with a book. Not an electronic device with a glowing screen, but an actual, real live book. Pages and everything!

My first task was to finish a book I'd barely started on my last out-of-town trip, a nonfiction travelogue by Portland journalist, photographer and Fulbright grant recipient Judy Blankenship, about a year that she and her husband Michael spent in the highlands of Ecuador.

Part memoir, part cultural study, Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador documents the lives and rituals of the people of Cañar as Blankenship records them in words and in her startlingly intimate photographs. From the foods they eat, to childbirth, to healing ceremonies, weddings and funerals, she writes with compassion about the people she gradually comes to call friends.

Not just some rich Westerner who drops in, takes some pretty pictures of colorful natives and then drops out again, she conducts photography workshops for the local people, especially the Cañari women, so that they can preserve their own visions of their culture as they struggle to merge ancient traditions with new technologies. In one scene, she's scheduled to teach photography to several cloistered nuns:

"Over the centuries, the cloister has grown to encompass an entire city block. all of which is enclosed by a twenty-foot wall, except for the beautiful church on one corner. As I stand waiting, an ancient woman who works in a stall nearby selling the herbal drinks and pastries made by the nuns hobbles down the street toward me, holding an enormous key on a metal ring. How old is that key? It is her job to open the outer doors of the convent twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, for one hour, when outsiders can have limited contact with the cloister.

"Inside the dark, stone-floored anteroom, I pull the thick rope hanging from the ceiling that rings a brass bell announcing a visitor. I have a few delicious minutes to sit quietly on the stone bench built into one wall, and I try to imagine what it would be like to pass through this entry as a young novice, knowing you will never see the outside world again."

This is a terrific book for armchair travelers and seasoned globe-trotters alike, or anyone who wants a good book to curl up with on a long flight,  while looking out at a rainy beach or even in your own favorite chair.

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I have to confess that this second book, HugoSF, was written by a friend. Fortunately he's a terrific writer, which I knew already from reading his blog, A Gentle Iconoclast in Paradise.

In this self-published first novel, author Jeffrey Hannan introduces us to Hugo Storm, a somewhat hapless denizen of the dot-com bubble that held millions of cubicle-dwelling Americans in its thrall. The bursting of that bubble, as might be expected, swamped him in its wake, but being the surviving sort he jumped into the booming real estate business.

Oops.

Hannan's way with words paints Hugo's world in deft and humorous strokes, the story never taking itself too seriously as it explores its hero's world: the post-millennial worker bees, queens, queers and movers that inhabited Bagdad by the Bay at the turn of the 21st century. It reminded me of other books that draw portraits of time and place and people, like John Berendt's dark poem to Savannah, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

"The Internet leveled the playing field among everyone—at least that was the theory. Standing on the deck of the Industry Standard bulding at the corner of Battery and Pacific, the ambient buzz was intoxicating and real. The social air was ripe with the smell of equal economic opportunity. You could see it condensing like spittle in the smiles of nouveau hipsters sipping wine and swilling beer."

Or this:

"In Silicon Valley there were myriad characters of varying means and intellect, but none that was as revered, feared, envied, loved or despised as much as the VC. The Venture Capitalist. They scoured the region for ideas and when they found what seemed like a good one they stuffed the underneath of it with cash as if it were kindling and set the whole thing on fire. They recruited a management team then took over the Board and stoked the flames to their ultimate end, which sometimes included walking away to let the fire burn out on its own."

This is a fun read and one that makes a perfect vacation book…an enjoyable trip to take on your next trip.

Photo at top by Judy Blankenship.

My Life in France

Unfortunately I haven't yet had that life, but at least I can read about someone who has. This is the well-reviewed and much talked about book by Julia Child's nephew that was written in collaboration with her in her last years. It's a book she'd wanted to write for many years but just hadn't gotten around to, and when her writer nephew offered to help get it done, she jumped at the chance.

Reviewing the voluminous letters she and her husband, the writer and artist Paul Child, had written to various friends and relatives while Paul worked for the American embassy in Paris and Marseille, Alex Prud'homme has done a marvelous job of telling their story in Julia's unforgettable voice. Forthright and funny, she goes from being an insecure new bride plopped in a strange land where she doesn't know the language to an indefatigable champion of the country's people and culture. It also tells the story of this loving but unlikely couple, Julia over six feet tall with horsey good looks and Paul a shorter, bald man ten years her senior.

A much more concise work than the hideously edited but fascinating biography, "Appetite for Life" by Noel Riley Fitch, this is a good introduction to a very human Julia Child before she became a revered (and caricatured) American icon.