These are charming and wise stories, simply told, to be enjoyed by young and old alike—“stories need us if they are to come...
Native American tales relate the story of California's Sonoma Mountain.
Sarris (Writing and Native American Studies/Sonoma State University; Watermelon Nights, 1999, etc.) is chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, and these stories were previously published in the tribal newsletter. Inspired by traditional Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo creation tales, they're set near Santa Rosa, California, and tell the story of nearby Sonoma Mountain. As Sarris points out, it “isn’t one story; it is many stories that make up the one story.” The book is like an ancient story cycle as it gathers together 16 different tales, each introduced by Coyote’s twin granddaughters, Answer Woman and Question Woman. Coyote is “the one who created this world, this Mountain.” His granddaughters may be a pair of crows who sit on a fence partway up the mountain or they be humans. Answer Woman knows the stories but cannot think of them unless asked by Question Woman. The book begins and ends with tales about a pretty woman and her necklace, which act as a framing device, connecting the stories just as "this necklace contains the songs and stories of your home, this wondrous Mountain. Each shell bead contains a song, and each abalone pendant one of the stories." Local animals—crow, mole, centipede, lizard, rattlesnake, skunk, bat—play significant roles. Each story addresses something different. When Question Woman asks, “How did night come about in the first place?" Answer Woman responds, “I can give you the answer with one story. Listen.” When asked, “How did pain come about?” Answer Woman responds, “Listen carefully. It’s the story of how a mountain was made.” At one point Answer Woman responds that stories “are like windows that we can look out of and see a part of the real world.” An illustrated volume would be welcomed.
These are charming and wise stories, simply told, to be enjoyed by young and old alike—“stories need us if they are to come forth and have life too.”Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59714-414-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Heyday
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.
Former Dirty Jobs star Rowe serves up a few dozen brief human-interest stories.
Building on his popular podcast, the author “tells some true stories you probably don’t know, about some famous people you probably do.” Some of those stories, he allows, have been subject to correction, just as on his TV show he was “corrected on windmills and oil derricks, coal mines and construction sites, frack tanks, pig farms, slime lines, and lumber mills.” Still, it’s clear that he takes pains to get things right even if he’s not above a few too-obvious groaners, writing about erections (of skyscrapers, that is, and, less elegantly, of pigs) here and Joan Rivers (“the Bonnie Parker of comedy”) there, working the likes of Bob Dylan, William Randolph Hearst, and John Wayne into the discourse. The most charming pieces play on Rowe’s own foibles. In one, he writes of having taken a soft job as a “caretaker”—in quotes—of a country estate with few clear lines of responsibility save, as he reveals, humoring the resident ghost. As the author notes on his website, being a TV host gave him great skills in “talking for long periods without saying anything of substance,” and some of his stories are more filler than compelling narrative. In others, though, he digs deeper, as when he writes of Jason Everman, a rock guitarist who walked away from two spectacularly successful bands (Nirvana and Soundgarden) in order to serve as a special forces operative: “If you thought that Pete Best blew his chance with the Beatles, consider this: the first band Jason bungled sold 30 million records in a single year.” Speaking of rock stars, Rowe does a good job with the oft-repeated matter of Charlie Manson’s brief career as a songwriter: “No one can say if having his song stolen by the Beach Boys pushed Charlie over the edge,” writes the author, but it can’t have helped.
Never especially challenging or provocative but pleasant enough light reading.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982130-85-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.
A firsthand account of how the Navajo language was used to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.
At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional Navajo community, he became fluent in English, his second language, in government-run boarding schools. The author writes that he wanted to serve his country and explore “the possibilities and opportunities offered out there in the larger world.” Because he was bilingual, he was one of the original 29 “code talkers” selected to develop a secret, unbreakable code based on the Navajo language, which was to be used for battlefield military communications on the Pacific front. Because the Navajo language is tonal and unwritten, it is extremely difficult for a non-native speaker to learn. The code created an alphabet based on English words such as ant for “A,” which were then translated into its Navajo equivalent. On the battlefield, Navajo code talkers would use voice transmissions over the radio, spoken in Navajo to convey secret information. Nez writes movingly about the hard-fought battles waged by the Marines to recapture Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and others, in which he and his fellow code talkers played a crucial role. He situates his wartime experiences in the context of his life before the war, growing up on a sheep farm, and after when he worked for the VA and raised a family in New Mexico. Although he had hoped to make his family proud of his wartime role, until 1968 the code was classified and he was sworn to silence. He sums up his life “as better than he could ever have expected,” and looks back with pride on the part he played in “a new, triumphant oral and written [Navajo] tradition,” his culture's contribution to victory.
A unique, inspiring story by a member of the Greatest Generation.Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-425-24423-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dutton Caliber
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
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