West Virginia Books

In American history, westward expansion was the key to opening up new territories. From Lewis and Clark to the Gold rush in 1849 to Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickcock the stories you hear are amazing. But what about those stories that aren't about glamour and fortune, what about those?

In the book One Eternal Winter you will be reading about an group of people who had tragedy upon tragedy thrust on them and how this affected their decisions and how and why things that happened aren't always the way Hollywood makes them out to be.

The Donner Party was to travel from Springfield, Illinois to California in hopes of finding new property and beginning a new life. What happened in Donner Pass is still one of the great tragedies in American History.

A winter that saw people starving to the point of cannibalism. The endurance of the families involved and the breaking of the human spirit is what made the reading so interesting. I was able to finish the reading in less than 1 hour.

History and American expansion, drama and tragedy, One Eternal Winter blends it all together and you have a story more that Hollywood could ever dream of.

I enjoyed taking little sips of other West Virginia family's histories as I read through this wonderful book. It never occurred to me that I would find my own family, but there is was on page 163, "A Front Porch in Halleck". My grandfather was old Mr. Richardson who sat legless on the front porch as he sold his farm in 1965. It was wonderful to read about him and to learn the history of that special farm house where I spent so many delightful weekends as a child.

We are headed to Seattle to "scope it out" for a possible relocation and I just received this book. It is simply laid out and obviously written by a parent who knows what kids enjoy. It focuses on non-"commercial", quality family time which I love!

Rinda West's Out of the Shadow is what she calls a "restoration narrative," and the restoration of which she speaks is many limbed, extending in directions of which even the author may be unaware.
Perhaps because I too am a baby-boomer, I find this book a refreshing return to a way of speaking and seeing, to a discourse, long since abandoned but not, as West proves, forgotten. Elegantly written and free of the kind of overly-rationalized, guilt-ridden, self-destructive prose of the post-modernists, this book happily embraces a Jungian essentialism that not only embraces nature and an essential self, but champions this essentialist discourse as a way back, a restoration, not just to individual health, but to planetary health, and along the way champions a recovery from a criticism that only deconstructs and cannot find a presence upon which to rebuild.
C.J. Jung's theory of "the shadow," the dark alter ego which lurks in the subconscious as a foil to the rational ego, is the unifying thread of her argument. We haven't heard much of Jung of late, nor of his belief in the healing potential implicit in the re-union of intellect with the unconscious, of the overly-civilized ego with the nature in us and outside of us. That at least this echo of 60s romanticism survived the desert wastes of post-modernism signals hope, for it is a dirty secret not heard much in academia that the radical moment 40 years ago was more a moment of romantic essentialism than deconstructive post-modernism. That rebellion was waged with nature as the alternative to the establishment. West's book is a return to that older, healing insight.
That this is a book written as part of the University of Virginia's series "explorations in ecocriticism" is fitting. For the rediscovery of the importance of nature for our own wholeness is the heart of West's text as well as the texts she unveils for us. Concentrating largely, but not exclusively on "women's fiction," West shows how the novels of Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, to name only a few of the authors referenced in this richly varied work, play out Jung's themes. Reading these works with a sensitive eye, she shows how in each text the rituals which return us to the earth itself, can also return us to ourselves. To reach out and to touch nature, and the nature in ourselves, is to recognize and be reconciled with our shadows.
What West herself says of Erdrich perhaps can stand as a comment on her own book: "in restoring vitality to the culture, the land, and the psyche, she generates a rich diversity that ensures there is room for everyone."

Cleta Long is by far one of the best poets out there. Her poetry is refreshing and simply wonderful. I highly recommend getting a copy for yourself and your best friend(as I know she will love it)!

R.S.

McKeown's extraordinary biography of a young pacifist (Tom Bennett) who went to the Vietnam war as a medic is farm more than a chronicle of a boy's difficult, deadly passage into manhood. It is a passionate portrait of a small town...Morgantown, West Virginia...and a great university, both torn by the political and spiritual struggles of the late 1960's.

The author was born in Philadelphia and was partly reared in Hampshire County, West Virginia. A nationally known poet, she was active in many political causes.

An errie story told through fantastic photographs taken by the author. A story of a young woman who was murdered while incarcerated in a prison . The prison has now become a beautiful country inn with a third floor remaining as a prison without electricity. Tiny drawings on the wall left by the young murdered woman. A must read!

Don Nehlen rules as perhaps the greatest football coach in West Virginia University history 1980-2001.It's a must read if you can find it,hopefully it will be republished in the not so distant future!!!

A wonderful collection of inspirational poems. Touches the soul and warms the heart.

Judy Rosenthal explains the Ewes' (pronounced Ev'he) cultural mobility as simultaneously a spiritual expression of African individuality and personhood. She argues that we must begin "with the knowledge that Ewe culture travels and is traveling... Ewe personhood is a travel narrative." The Ewe people lifestyle, material production and familial reproduction are all contingent on regular mobility but irregular movement; from town to town, village to village, and from colonial anathema (a.k.a. Ghana & Togo) to post-colonial anathema. Spiritual production is no exception to this; not only do Ewes move around Ewe-land from gorovodu ceremony to Afa divination ritual, but the spirits they celebrate are those of the mobile: of northern slaves and of rural migrants. Moreover, her compelling analysis of Ewe slave-spirit possession guides the reader to the very un-Western possibility that, upon this cultural continuity in the form of celebrating slave ancestors, is dependent Ewe "individuation and individuality". Drawing on de Surgy , she claims Ewe individuation is more personal and unique than Western individualism, "yet never whole or completely separated from other persons, spirits and times" - pulling constantly on the spirits and community memories of those whose lives were framed by mobility and migration. This book has significantly influenced my own research and methodology and is Highly Recommended to academics and novices/fetichists. Benjamin Nicholas LAWRANCE Stanford University