3 Reads now on to better books

Just finished the 218 page “Spirit Car” by Diane Wilson. It is part memoir and part historical fiction about her heritage, Dakota (Sioux) Indians and their ungodly mistreatment in the 1860’s. I met Diane this winter at our local Library when she came one evening to discuss her book. I learned a lot about local history reading this and even about certain settlers and fur traders like the Myricks for whom a park in La Crosse is named. There were parts where it lost me when she delved into what she termed “intuitive anthropology” where fact and history and fiction or intuitions combine. It’s unlikely I would have ever picked this book up, but I feel smarter for having read it. Certainly the Indians were severely mistreated in this part of the country buy the settlers of Scandinavian descent in particular. Driver from lousy land to reservation to more lousy land and finally forced to march to Ft. Snelling, MN which was an Indian concentration camp. Diane includes what she knows about her Dakota heritage. It was interesting to read how her family assimilated and intermarried to survive until traces of Indian heritage vanished. Her mother was left at an Indian boarding school at a young age and the family moved on without her though a few years later they sent for her. The family  shows no bittrness but over and over merely the attitude, "that's how it is and we  survived and did our best."  Quite stalwart and admirable.  Parts are heart rending and parts of the book are horrifying such as the hanging of the Indians in Mankato in 1862. Some parts lost me as she describes imaginatively driving a Spirit Car for her ancestors back in Nebraska and South Dakota. How the half breeds chose to participate in the Civil War impacted their history. I have a curiosity and sympathy for these people who were more abused than the slaves of the south.   And I can better relate to them coming from a family that did not discuss its own history but just wanted to forge ahead. Anyone interested in fur traders and early northern Indian history would benefit from reading this book. It was serendipity that I learned of this book.




On our trip took along a book that has been on my “to read” shelf for some time, “The Memory Keeper’s’ Daughter” by Kim Edwards. This is a distinctive novel set in Kentucky about a snow storm and the nurse who assists the doctor in the birth of his twins; one twin is born with Down’s syndrome. The doctor tells the nurse to take the baby to an institution. He never tells his wife instead, he tells her that the daughter was still born. The nurse, Caroline, instead after visiting the institution determines to keep the baby and raise her as her own; she leaves for Pittsburgh where she raises Phoebe, the child. Life takes strange turns as Norah, the mother and Dr. David Henry, the father continue their lives and raise their son. The ever needy dependent Norah finally hits her own stride and becomes a successful travel agent and David who thinks he controls and fixes everything, cannot accept that. Parallel stories occur with Caroline in Pittsburgh and the Henry’s in KY. David pursues his hobby of photography with a vengeance and his fame brings him to Pittsburgh where Caroline comes to see him. This was an entertaining novel and a good one to read over time as on our trip. It was not always easy to put it down but then I managed to regain the story line when I did return to read. So this novel can be read at multiple settings. It is a memorable story finally when Norah learns of her daughter and David dies. Not so much eloquent writing that I admired in this book, but there are some good lines, pg. 7, “ .. the lie from a year before darting like a dark bird through the room….” I would recommend this book which was a NYTimes Bestseller 2004-05.  It  kept me interested waiting to see what happened with Caroline and Phoebe and I was not at all disappointed in the  ending with some reunification, but Phoebe defiantly declaring to Norah and others, "She  is my Mom" referring to Caroline.  



A month or so back I finished, “Falling Through the Earth” by Daniele Trussoni, who is almost a local author writing about growing up in La Crosse, WI as the daughter of an alcoholic Vietnam vet. There was quite a bit of publicity about this book when it was released a couple years ago.   It was interesting for me to read about local places that I recognize. But the book was tiresome. Her father takes her to rise when the parents divorce as the wife and mother can no longer tolerate his drinking. It is clear and very understandable that the author favored her father, and why not when the mother seemed distant to this daughter. I can say that she falls into not such good habits in her teen years including drinking, smoking and forging her father’s signature on checks though this perhaps was how she survived. She does leave her father and return to live with her mother at age 16 which may have been her salvation; to her credit that she does attend college and survives to write this memoir. She becomes strong but hard. She did not have an easy life at all and I cannot decide whether she wrote this book to memorialize that or to vilify war and the military. Her prejudice about the Vietnam War comes through loud and clear. She refers to small towns as “reservoirs of the draft….where men went to war without resistance….” Obviously she cannot fathom patriotism. She claims to go to Vietnam to better know her father, but to me it seems she does that to solidify her own attitude toward war and how wrong it is. She blames it on causing her father’s alcoholism resulting from his Army tour there as a tunnel rat. I could not help but think that he may have been destined to be the way he was regardless of Vietnam after reading about his family and environment. She describes her own trip to Vietnam seeking answers, which I found a bit tedious. Still I do like to read memoirs and this book is that coming from her own experience. I would not really recommend it as an entertaining or intriguing book.