Customer Comments

This book, basically, is why I love Oregon. Jon Raymond hits everything exactly right, from an entitled Lake Oswego subdivision to Lloyd Center to Newport in the middle of winter. Apart from the nail-on-the-head sense of place, the stories are also just good (the one about the artist and her boyfriend was forgettable, but "The Suckling Pig" makes up for that by being one of the most compelling stories I've read in a long time.) My vote is for Jon Raymond as the next (next?) Great Oregon Writer. His stuff rocks my world.

This might be the great (largely unread) Oregon novel. It takes me back to Sophomore English, where we were taught (a bit simplistically - did anybody else get this hammered into them?) that all of literature can be divvied up into about four stories: man versus man, man versus nature, man versus God and man versus himself. I think those were the four. "Trask" has 'em all - and, just like the uber-masculine pattern outlined, women have basically nothing to do with this story (there is the long-suffering wife, but she disappears after the first third of the book.) "Trask" is a quest narrative, a buddy novel, a pretty fascinating first encounter story, and finally the death-grips struggle of one guy alone in the wilderness, and that last act (which, honestly, is not a subject that particularly interests me on paper) is absolutely riveting. The scene where Trask makes fire is one of the best things I've read in a long time, and the first time I've cried while reading a book since I was ten years old. I can't say enough about this book, even though it represents things I find totally suspect: all-male worlds, rugged individualism, and white guys writing about Native American spirituality (nearly always a bad idea). "Trask" makes it all work, somehow, with grace and beauty and a razor-sharp sense of place. I haven't loved a book like this in a while - it's nice to know there's still writing out there that can do this to you.

My prospective brother-in-law gave me this book for Christmas, which won him major points in my book. I was one of those geeky history kids who wore my "End of the Oregon Trail" t-shirt all over the place, and worked as a junior docent at an Oregon City museum in middle school: being an Oregonian has always been a big deal to me. I moved away and tried to become an East Coaster, but reading this book was, for me, part of the way I figured out what home actually means for me. So thanks, Matt Love and the fantastic writers you've gathered together in these pages, because you're the reason I'm getting off my rear and making my own trek across the trail to re-settle in the state that means more to me - in terms of identity, in terms of a history and a vibe that makes sense to me, in terms of the people and places that I love - than anywhere else on earth. BUY IT, if for no other reason than to support people who are not only great writers and great Oregonians, but also your friends and neighbors; your family. The works collected here cover an incredible breadth - it's the kind of book I'll keep on my bedside for a long time to dip in and out of - but, most of all, they're personal: it's like a big family reunion, everybody swapping stories back and forth, bound together by this incredible love of a place and the identity it forms. I could go on and on. This book is a treasure.