Three books of regional interest for March
“All Our Yesterdays,” by Joel H. Morris (Putnam)
History records Lady Macbeth as an evil, unnatural and conniving woman, but then, written by men, history often considers ambitious women as evil, unnatural and conniving. Colorado author Joel H. Morris gives a different view of the Scottish queen in this beautifully written novel, “Áll Our Yesterdays.” It is filled with tenderness and understanding.
That is not to say Morris is uncritical of The Lady, as he calls her. At the same time that she is described as a loving wife and mother, she is also shown as a woman who is caught up in intrigue, who muddles in “the affairs of men,” inspired by a childhood witch’s prophecy: “I hear it on the wind, in the trees. You shall be queen,” Lady Macbeth says.
Her grandfather had been king, and The Lady was born into an ambitious and royal household. Her mother died in childbirth. Her father was cold and distant, and married her off at 15 to the Mormaer of Moray, a brutish man who disgraced her in public and beat her in private. Shortly after a son was born, the Mormaer was killed by Macbeth, a justifiable death since the Mormaer had killed Macbeth’s father.
Macbeth allowed The Lady to stay on in the castle, then married her. Lady Macbeth loved her husband, but she loved her son, who Macbeth adopted, even more. When Macbeth took him to battle rebels, Lady Macbeth fretted that if Macbeth didn’t return, she might have been fated to marry the heir to the throne. That way, she would indeed be queen. But Macbeth did come back, and his lady kept her ambition in check.
“All Our Yesterdays” is filled with lush writing, told in alternating chapters of The Lady and The Boy. The book tells an intriguing story of one of history’s most ambitious women, but it is the writing that really carries “All Our Yesterdays.”
“On the Run,” by Joanne Greenberg (Mcmania)
Hundreds of Front Range accident victims have been comforted, their lives sometimes saved by a mountain firefighter and rescue team worker. It is unlikely that even a few of them realized the motherly worker was beloved literary figure Joanne Greenberg, author of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.”
For 13 years, Greenberg was available around the clock, summoned when sleeping or canning or chopping wood, to aid traffic accident victims and neighbors in medical emergencies. “On the Run” is the story of the 100 or more calls a year she responded to. Greenberg also gives glimpses of her home life and her writing career that fans will cherish.
Greenberg and a neighbor woman volunteered to act as first responders to back up local firefighters who couldn’t reach remote homes in the mountains just west of Denver. The women proved themselves in horrific circumstances, often risking their lives to save victims. They saw neighbor children dead in drunk-driving accidents, strangers maimed by speeders on I-70 and elderly friends stricken with heart attacks.
Over the years, as land developers snapped up shacks and old homesteads on Lookout Mountain, the rescue service changed from the days when neighbors helped neighbors, to a time when newcomers felt entitled, and volunteers feared lawsuits. The regulations and paperwork and the stress they caused led Greenberg to give up the work.
Readers will be disappointed that they won’t know the aftermath of accidents, because Greenberg rarely did. One case was different, however. More than 30 years ago, 3-year-old Lori Poland was kidnapped and left to die in the vault of an outhouse. A tourist couple found her and called for help; Greenberg was first on the scene. A helper arrived who climbed into the privy and handed the little girl to Greenberg.
On the way to the hospital, a cop asked Greenberg to quiz the girl about her abductor. Greenberg refused, knowing that what the child needed was a sense of normalcy.
The two talked about pizza and Pepsi, and Greenberg told Lori what had happened wasn’t her fault. Years later, Greenberg met with Lori and her children and was impressed that the woman had put the incident behind her.
“Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country,” edited by Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing and Leisl Carr Childress (Bison Books)
Wallace Stegner was not just a writer and a Pulitzer Prize winner, he was also a visionary who was one of the leaders of the West’s nascent conservation movement.
The essays in this book show how broad his thinking and influence was.
As a novelist, Stegner “ruptured the frontier myth and described in excruciating detail the reality behind the illusions and pretensions of settler colonialism,” writes editor Mark Fiege. Stegner’s characters were not heroic pioneers but disillusioned Westerners who faced hardship and failure as settlers.
He wrote of human limitations in the face of nature’s power.
Stegner chaffed at being called a “Western writer.” He yearned for a time when Western writing was respected by the then-dismissive literary world, writes essayist Flannery Burke in a section titled “Exploits Against the Effete.”
Other essayists tell of Stegner’s work for conservation and against racism, his childhood poverty and his relationship with historian Bernard Devoto.