Willamette University Books

This book makes important and original contributions to the understanding of Gender and Generation on the Far Western Frontier. It teaches valuable lessons for today's Americans. I am reading this as a gradutate student of history at the University of North Dakota. It is informative and rich in detail as any textbook with footnotes, but surprisingly easy to read and understand. (Unlike too many post-graduate dissertations.)

(Full Disclosure: I am a student of Dr. Prescott's.)

I heartily recommend this easy-to-read-and-follow work in the areas of western history (with real women included and portrayed) and for anyone ready to advance beyond 'hollywood history' of the American Northwest.

Buy this book to read, learn and enjoy!

Dr. Prescott offers an insightful look at first and second generation settlers in Oregon's Willamette Valley during the mid-to-late 19th century. Dr. Prescott contends that favorable farming conditions in addition to generous land grants made it possible for women as well as men to progress very quickly from frontier farming roles to a more consumer-oriented middle class way of life. Using the diaries of Maria Locey, the quilts of Zeralda Carpenter Bones Stone, and many other sources, Dr. Prescott presents a very readable glimpse of pioneer life in Oregon.

My husband liked this book. Arrived in good shape and in a timely fashion. Thanks.

I had the pleasure of learning from Ron Lansing for three years at law school. He is an amazing mind, and one of the finest story tellers I have ever encountered. Since most of us can't travel to Oregon to hear him lecture on the law, do yourself a favor and get this book.

I usually read books like this once, then trade them in. But this is a "keeper" to be read again and again.

It works on many levels and for many people. First, if you've ever thought about moving to the country, it is full of solid information on everything from wells to livestock. But it's also so full of humor and sensitivity, a true love of nature and an adventurous spirit that it makes great reading even if you're a metropolitan-ite.

The book had particular appeal to me since the author lives, and wrote about, an area not far from my home; one of my favorite places (Yamhill county, Oregon). If only she'd sell her farm to me!

Drake's book is warm and touching but never mushy. She uses her words with economy to create vivid images that strike the eye, and the mind. I would encourage everyone to pick up a copy of this book. Filled with positive images, and insights that are surprising and touching, it's a great read, I couldn't put it down.

Barbara Drake has written a sweet and lovely word-picture of her life on the Oregon farm she shares with her husband and their motley group of animals. Although she writes with a tender love for her land, and all that is on it, it is never saccharine, and is actually quite informative for anyone thinking of undertaking this type of lifestyle change.The book is written as a collection of brilliant essays,each filled with pathos,tenderness,and a deep understanding of the dramatic lifestyle changes involved in delving into farming.We meet, and learn to love, her sheep, geese, the sheepherding dogs,and the colorful neighbors. And even her warm and adoring father,who has an especially hilarious relationship with the hugely protective gander who patrols the gaggle of geese on the property, becomes someone you wish you could have met in person. This is one of those truly magical reads that leaves you with an afterglow of satisfaction after it's done. This is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the beauty and the magic of nature, the relationship of animal friends, the satisfaction of self-reliance and independence, or just someone who loves simply-beautiful prose. Barbara Drake is a poet at heart.

I ordered this book based on the positive reviews, and it was just delivered to me today.

As I was breezing cursorily through it, I came to a description of the author's lambs being taken away for slaughter.

Guess I was expecting a wonderful book of heart such as "Enslaved by Ducks" by Bob Tarte, where he and his wife, Linda, love their pets (at last count, in "Fowl Weather", the sequel, being 37 I believe), and deeply mourn when they experience the loss of them due to death.

So this book is not for anyone expecting a totally loving tale. I personally could not find "Peace at Heart" while raising lambs for slaughter.

Anyway, just a warning for those of you whom this might bother or disturb. It is probably very well written, but I personally will spare myself sorrowful feelings by not reading it.

If you've ever wanted to just forget city life and pack up and move to the country, read this book. It's a great collection of non-fiction writing about Drake's life in rural wine country, raising sheep and making wine.

I bought this book because of the great reviews, because I was looking for something new, and because of the emphasis from some reviews here on Amazon on the World War II sections.

But overall, this book is first and foremost about life in american suburbia - the very powerful World War II chapters occupy at best 20-25% of the book, and don't kick in until about half way through. So much of the remainder of the book reverted to why people have a hard time making deep friendships or building satisfactory family relationships in typical, affluent american neighborhoods. Some parts here were very touching, particularly the one about the Hickey's, but others seemed forced, particularly the Liv-Renny relationship. The sequence of events towards the end strains credulity, and I found the "happy" ending dissatisfying.'

I dont usually identify with books in set in america suburbia. In this case, I came out somewhat satisfied. At the very least, I finished the book (in two days), which is already saying something given that I was unable to do so when I tried books by Richard Ford and Tim Obrien which also had great reviews. But it will take another book to make me a fan of this genre.

Ah, the unreliable narrator. Lee has an excellent command of the English language, as always present in his novels. This element is always an interesting juxtaposition in the lives of his characters--as it is often assumed that immigrants would be clumsy and ignorant when speaking in a non-native language (which is also a reference to one of his other works, Native-Speaker).

Doc, who is called Doc by all the towns residents, is not a doctor at all, one of many ironic details of his life. He is excellent proof that inaction and not making active choices are in fact action and active choices. A man with a weak heart, literally and metaphorically, Doc Hata misrepsents himself his whole life, or lets others believe things about him that aren't quite true, nor are they false.

A work of slippery truths, examples of how memory is distorted and frail, liminal spaces, and unexpected twists, this novel provides an excellent literary and thought-provoking journey.

A Gesture Life. The very title of this novel intrigued me. What exactly would that look/feel/sound like? Then I pulled the book from the shelf and was no less satisfied but all the more compelled by its cover---at once dreamy, theatrical, beautiful in some classic way...

Now that I have finished this book I can say "Yes, I certainly know what Chang-rae Lee means by A Gesture Life. This work is phenomenal in ways that lull the reader into a sense of "All is right with the world", only to have that world up-ended by layers-deep revelations...some coming in cumulative fashion, others coming at you so fast you've no time to 'duck' [or even consider the possibility]. Then again, there are those illuminations that you believe you understand, only to find they stretch and grow larger, and at times, to the point of inconceiveablity.

Lee's writing is on par with the finest I've ever had the experience to read. It is breathtaking in its poetic beauty, haunting in its relentlessness, transcendental in its offering of this amazing life of Doc Hata, its main character. I am left struck with so many new awarenesses, and simple relief for the realizations brought to light within the pages of this book. I often imagined HOW Lee kept himself composed to write many parts within it. Lee's ability to empathize and lend grace to unspeakable circumstances is immeasurable.

Remarkable, astounding, honest work. I am grateful to know this author's work and will now seek out everything else he has to share with us.

Bravo, Bravo, Bravo.

child's play, that's the impression one gets upon reading chang-rae lee's gesture life, child's play in the sense that the author is at home in english as no other writer currently wielding this thing we've assigned our globe's lingua franca. maybe i exaggerate a little, but there is no denying the talent, the effortless grace with which chang-rae lee can evoke an image, intercalate a dialogue with a telling descriptive detail, and sustain a narrative without resorting to gimmicks or fancy word play. mastery of diction, syntax, narrative structure and style, they're all there for the aspiring novelist to envy and admire and the casual reader to blissfully ignore as the story and the plot is as equally elegant, profound and compelling. buy the book or steal it if you must, just get the darn thing and read. you'll be doing yourself a favor.

Franklin Hata (or "Doc Hata," as he is known to the residents of Bedley Run) is a friendly and polite, if reserved and serene, septuagenarian who is considered by his neighbors as a stalwart member of the community. Of Korean birth, he was adopted and raised by a family in Japan and entered the Japanese Army during Second World War before emigrating to the United States. In spite of his efforts to immerse himself first in his Japanese homeland and then in American suburbia, he never becomes fully part of either culture.

The conflicted protaganist of "A Gesture Life" is also a reluctant narrator of his own life. Having spent seven decades building a facade of decorum, he hides failures and misfortunes from the reader, revealing them glacially as he accounts for the loneliness in his old age, as well as for his ultimate inability to fill roles others expect of him--and he expects of himself.

Hata's story revolves around the presence of five women, and he sheds his secretiveness as he introduces and portrays each of them. Foremost is his adopted Korean daughter, Sunny, who as a youth gradually rebelled against his propriety and his remoteness and who scorns the dreams he has envisioned for her future. Repulsed and even embarrassed by his artificiality, she tells him spitefully, "You make a whole life out of gestures and politeness."

Hata also becomes close (or as close as his politesse will allow) to three women in the community: a neighbor with whom he has a brief affair, a realtor who wants to put his immaculately kept home on the market, and the mother of a terminally ill son who, along with her husband, buys Hata's medical supplies shop when he retires.

But a central conceit of the novel is a lesser-known aspect of the Pacific war. We gradually realize that Hata's relationship with his daughter is an unsuccessful attempt at redemption for his involvement, as a medical officer in the Japanese army, with the Korean "comfort women" who were enticed to volunteer for service and then forced to be prostitutes--and particularly for one of the women, Kkutaeh, who suffers horrendously on his watch.

Lee's novel is notable for its dichotomy: Hata's quiet mien and the seemingly calm first-person narrative conflict sharply with the tragedies and the strife he witnesses and reluctantly recalls. "A Gesture Life" is a study of a man so concerned with always doing the right thing that he inevitably does the wrong one. It is only when he confronts his past that he truly finds redemption.