Boulder News

New West Book Review

Forget Me Not
by Jennifer Lowe-Anker
Mountaineers Books, 256 pages, $24.95

In Forget Me Not, Jennifer Lowe-Anker chronicles life with her first husband Alex Lowe, who was thought by many to be the world’s best mountain climber before he was lost in an avalanche in the Tibetan Himalayas in 1999. Her memoir, comprehensive and faithful, does his life of achievement great justice, and is surprisingly upbeat even as she attempts to answer some of the darker questions associated with his vocation. As she examines Alex’s childhood as well as their courtship—when his profession as a mountain climber first took shape—she wonders how Alex became such an intense leader and climber, risking his life again and again, and, in his case, even with a family waiting at home.

At the beginning of the book, Lowe-Anker writes of Alex’s heart, that it was “frequently and most definitely in conflict with itself.” And at the end of the book, Lowe-Anker states that the writing of this memoir has been cathartic. Though her main aim is to memorialize the grandness of Alex’s success and scope, she also ends up describing the troubling fact that she was often left alone to raise three boys. She grapples with why she was attracted to such a life in the first place, and then why she was so understanding—so much so that Alex himself dubbed her “Saint Jennifer.”  

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THE LEGACY OF KENTON CARNEGIE

Anything wolf makes big headlines--and, it seems, is never old news.

For fourteen years since conservationists and the federal government brought the wolf back to the northern Rockies (plus several years leading up to the reintroduction), anything and everything about the Big Dog has been, to say the least, controversial.

But something hasn't happened yet that could make it much more contentious. 

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Western Book Roundup

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. 

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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.
 

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New West Book Review

Children of the Waters
by Carleen Brice
One World/Ballantine, 304 pages, $14

Denver novelist Carleen Brice's second novel is a quick-paced family drama that turns on a secret adoption, told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of two sisters who are unknown to each other, living in the same city but in very different worlds. Trish Taylor is a blond, overweight veterinary technician who came back to her hometown of Aurora, Colo. after her marriage failed, bringing her biracial teenage son Will with her. Trish was told her mother and infant sister died in a car accident when she was a preschooler, and her stern grandparents raised her. Billie Cousins is the cherished daughter of a successful Denver African-American family. Her mother is a Reynelda Muse-like local television anchor, and her father is the dean of the business school at the University of Colorado. Through a newly discovered letter and a visit to an old neighbor, Trish learns that Billie is the sister she thought died in infancy, and tracks her down, disrupting both their lives.

Carleen Brice will discuss her new book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 16 at 7:30 p.m. 

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IS ANOTHER LAYER OF PROTECTION WORTH THE COST?

If you've read any of my past columns, you know I'm a strong proponent of designating more Wilderness, but when considering whether to support including our national parks under the National Wilderness Preservation System, I have to wonder if this is a good idea. Here's why. 

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