Fromm’s finely tuned reflections on this small but fully inhabited piece of the backwoods make this an adventure worth...
A middle-aged novelist and creative-writing teacher spends a month in the wilderness keeping an eye on baby fish for the National Forest Service and reliving his earlier experiences in the wild.
When Fromm (If Not for This, 2014, etc.) heard that he was a candidate to monitor the development of grayling eggs in the Bob Marshall Wilderness of Montana in May and June of 2004, he thought it would be a perfect opportunity to introduce his sons, then 9 and 6, to the wilderness he loves so much. The Forest Service, not surprisingly, vetoed this suggestion, so he ended up on his own, his only human contact brief radio calls to his supervisors a couple of times per week. Fromm had plenty of nonhuman company, however, as he made his daily 10-mile round trip on foot, often through the nearly freezing rain, to check on the progress of the fish. A herd of elk grazed in the field outside his cabin, coyotes howled in the mountains, and he caught more than one glimpse of grizzly and black bears as he made his way down the path. To make sure that they knew he was there, he loudly sang the songs that he used to put his boys to sleep, including “The Noble Duke of York” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” The author alternates lovingly observed scenes from the month in the mountains with equally vivid chapters about the time he spent in his early 20s as a river ranger. While physical danger plays a part in the story, with bear attacks always a possibility, the author keeps the emphasis on internal conflict as he tries to reconcile his longing to be with his boys with the love of solitude and nature he hasn’t been able to indulge so thoroughly for years.
Fromm’s finely tuned reflections on this small but fully inhabited piece of the backwoods make this an adventure worth savoring.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-10168-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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