New West Book Review
David Mas Masumoto Pays the Price for Perfect Peaches
Wisdom of the Last Farmer
by David Mas Masumoto
Simon & Schuster, 238 pages, $25
David Mas Masumoto‘s Wisdom of the Last Farmer will make you want to go out and pay a farmer more than the asking price for his produce at a market. Masumoto grows organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes on his farm in California’s central valley, carrying on in the tradition of his family. His grandparents emigrated from Japan over a hundred years ago with the dream of buying land. Because they weren’t native born Americans, laws forbade them from purchasing land, so instead they worked in other people’s fields and suffered through internment in the Arizona desert during World War II. But they persevered and eventually their sons established the 80-acre farm that Masumoto now runs with his wife and children.
Masumoto is on a mission to preserve flavorful heirloom peaches that his family has grown for decades, varieties most farmers have abandoned because of supermarkets’ demands for harder, redder peaches with longer shelf life and transport durability. Masumoto wants people to experience the “Sun Crest peach, a fat and juicy gem with a stunning, honeyed flavor.” If people could try it, he thinks, they probably wouldn’t settle for the fruit that’s sold as peaches today.
In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, Masumoto, a columnist for the Fresno Bee and the award-winning author of several previous books, discusses his father’s decline in the wake of a stroke, and how their hard work in pursuit of a perfect peach breaks their bodies and spirits down. “Organic farming is not simple or easy,” Masumoto writes. “It’s easy to want to be environmentally responsible, but it’s a damned hard thing to achieve. I cannot replace tedious labor with faster technology or equipment when things go wrong.”
David Mas Masumoto will be in Utah to present his book in Salt Lake City at the King’s English Bookshop on Thursday, October 22 (5:30 p.m.). On October 23 and 24, he will participate in the Moab Confluence “Eating the West” literary festival, and on October 25 he will visit Denver’s Tattered Cover (Colfax, 2 p.m.) as a part of the Rocky Mountain Land Library reading series.
Western Book Roundup
Printed Page Bookshop Opens in Denver and Regional Writers Get Around
One of my fellow ex-Rocky Mountain News book reviewers, Dan Danbom, recently wrote in an email, "Now, instead of reviewing books, I've decided that a fast route to famine is to try to sell them." Along with his business partner, Nancy Stevens, this week the intrepid Danbom opened a new bookstore in Denver, Printed Page Bookshop, at 1416 S. Broadway. The shop is in a Victorian house, and features contemporary and vintage books. Printed Page's tagline: "Ask about our books on paper." Danbom notes that they will be "defiant and antiquated to the very end!"
To celebrate its opening, Printed Page will display a special exhibit of 50 banned books, and they invite patrons to guess which book among them has "never been the target of censorship on political, religious, social or sexual grounds." Four people who guess the right answer will win a shopping spree at the bookshop.
Christopher Cokinos, Utah State University professor and author of The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars, recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in honor of the annual Perseid meteor shower. In "Dust in the (Cosmic) Wind," he writes explains that "meteor showers are really comet dust" and that tiny particles of space dust filtering down to earth add a little extra crunch to everyone's vegetables: "As Donald Brownlee, an astronomer at the University of Washington who studies cosmic dust particles, has noted, 'If you had lettuce for lunch, you probably ate a few.'"
Also in the Roundup: Events for Margot Mifflin and David Knibb, a new Reading the West selection, and New West's Books & Writers page is now available on the Kindle. (Is it "the" Kindle?)
Western Writers
An interview with Christopher Cokinos, Writer, Star-Seeker, and Author of “The Fallen Sky”
Reading Christopher Cokinos’s new book, The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars (Tarcher/Penguin, 528 pages, $27.95), is like taking an adventurous romp into the realm of meteorites and their hunters. Passion, science, dreams, and desire are all brought together in this book, which makes it an exciting study of the human psyche as well as an in-depth exploration of nature and science. Cokinos currently lives with his partner Kathe Lison along the Blacksmith Fork River in Northern Utah’s Cache Valley. He teaches creative writing at Utah State University, where he has appointments in English and Natural Resources. I recently caught up with Christopher Cokinos to get the scoop on where this book took him (Greenland! Antarctica!), how it gave him a deeper love of his Utah home, and why—despite the far-flung research he conducted for this book—he still considers himself a “reluctant adventurer.” He will read from The Fallen Sky in Salt Lake City on August 27 at King’s English Bookstore (7 p.m.).
New West: You say that your new book, The Fallen Sky, is “an intimate history of shooting stars.” What do you mean by that?
Christopher Cokinos: Well, it’s a way to indicate that this is not traditional science writing or natural history. The book has a strong memoir thread—much stronger than I had anticipated—because as I was researching the passions, the lives, the successes and heartbreaks of meteorite hunters, I was in the midst of a new love, a divorce, a parent’s death, a move across the country, and more.
Western Book Roundup
July Brings Abundant Montana Books
I came across a funny passage in "Real Romance," Lauren Collins' profile of Nora Roberts for the June 22 issue of The New Yorker:
"She never makes an outline, and she does most of her research on Google. Before she wrote 'Montana Sky,' her editor suggested that she go to Montana. 'Why would I want to go to Montana?' Roberts said."
Perhaps it's for the best—Montana might not have room for another writer. Last year I noticed a curious lull in the literary output from Montana—usually half the books on my year-end best of the region list are connected to the state in some way. But last year there were more books set in Colorado. Now I realize why there weren't more Montana books—all the writers were preparing them for publication this July.
This week I reviewed a new book by Montana man of letters and woods, Rick Bass, The Wild Marsh, which is my favorite of his nonfiction books…so far.
Up for next week, a new collection of short stories by Maile Meloy, who grew up in Helena and has made a name for herself as one of the best young writers working today. Granta listed her in its "Best Young American Novelists" issue in 2007.
Next, I'm looking forward to reading the new short story collection by Kevin Canty, who teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Montana.
Western Book Roundup
“Reading the West” Gets the Word Out About Regional Books
A few weeks ago I wrote about some creative ideas people are coming up with to support books in the midst of this changing media landscape. In keeping with that theme, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association recently launched the Reading the West program, with the goal of helping bookstores promote books that are set in the West or those written by Western authors. The first featured books are New Mexico writer Rick Collignon's Madewell Brown and Austin-based Jaqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I spoke to MPIBA executive director Lisa Knudsen this week on the phone from her office in Fort Collins about the program.
Knudsen said that the MPIBA started the Reading the West program because "in these troubled economic times, we were looking for projects and programs that are free to our member booksellers and are a potential win win win—for the publisher, bookseller, and author."
"I shamelessly copied from my fellow regional bookseller associations," Knudsen said, noting that the Midwest and Great Lakes Bookseller associations sponsor similar programs. The Reading the West program makes advance copies of the featured books available to booksellers, as well as materials to use in their display and promotion. The authors are also available for readings at regional stores.
The MPIBA board hopes publishers will begin to send them information about relevant forthcoming books to be considered for the program, but for the first selections, the members discussed among themselves what good books of regional interest they knew were coming out.
"Rick Collignon is very popular in our region," Knudsen said, "and the committee was enthusiastic about his latest book. We also wanted to do what we could to promote independent publishers." Madewell Brown is published by Unbridled Books, an independent publisher based in Colorado.
Beetle hysteria has raised its head again, and I am not talking about the Fab four. A prominent article in the New York Times titled “Tiny Beetle Adds New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts” quotes many foresters and others who suggest that beetle-kill trees across the West will create larger wildfires and by implications are “destroying” our forests.
For instance, Montana’s State Forester Bob Harrington said as much at conference recently, as in the article. While it may seem “intuitively obvious” that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increases risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise.
At the heart of this and many other media reports are flawed assumptions about fires, what constitutes a healthy forest, and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs.
