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Seattle '84

The Pacific Northwest, like all other areas of the United States, has its own regional literature. This literature is widely varied in content and scope, and includes both fiction and non-fiction. The following list is meant to provide an introduction to the Northwest through some of the best writing available. All of the authors listed either lived or are currently living in the Northwest. The list is not intended to be comprehensive, but it should provide instead a sense of the life and the history of the Pacific Northwest for those of you who will be coming here in April 1984.

Non-Fiction

DeVoto, Bernard, ed. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

One of the earliest accounts of travel to the Northwest. This one-volume edition condenses the multi-volume journals, but retains the spelling and language of the original.

Doig, Ivan. Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

Doig traces James Gilchrist Swan’s travels in the Northwest, adding his own commentary to remarks from Swan’s diaries.

Heckman, Hazel. Island in the Sound. Seattle: University of Washington, 1967.

Essays about life on Anderson Island in the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound.

Holbrook, Stewart. The Columbia. New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1956.

A history of the Columbia River from the first exploration to the 1950s.

Holm, Bill, and Bill Reid. Indian Art of the Northwest Coast. Houston: Rice University Institute for the Arts, 1976.

A general instroduction to Northwest coast art through a discussion of specific objects. Written in dialogue form.

Johansen, Dorothy O., and Charles M. Gates. Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest. New York: Harper & Row, 1967.

A basic history of the Pacific Northwest from the first Indian inhabitants to the 20th century.

Morgan, Murray. Puget's Sound. Seattle: University of Washington, 1981.

A history of early Tacoma and southern Puget Sound from early exploration to the beginning of the 1900s.

Ramsey, Jarold, ed. Coyote Was Going There. Seattle: University of Washington, 1977.

Coyote was one of the wiliest of the characters in Northwest Indian legend. This book recounts several Oregon Indian legends.

Sale, Roger. Seattle, Past to Present. Seattle: University of Washington, 1976.

Sale chronicles the process of growth in Seattle from the founding of the city in 1851 to the 1970s.

Swan, James Gilchrist. Northwest Coast: Or, Three Years' Residence in Washington Territory. New York: Harper, 1857. Reprint. Seattle: University of Washington, 1972.

Notes made by a Bostonian living among the Indians in Washington Territory and British Columbia. Swan observed the white man’s invasion of the Indian lands while participating in the invasion himself. Doig’s Winter Brothers is based on Swan’s diaries.

Fiction

Berry, Don. Trask. New York: Viking, 1960.

The story of a white settler on the Northwest coast in the 1840s. Trask undergoes a mystical Indian experience which leads him to a better understanding of the Indian culture and to question his own people’s attitude towards the Indians.

Davis, H.L. Honey in the Horn. New York: Harper, 1935.

About a roving character named Clay Calvert, who wanders all over Oregon in 1906-1908. Calvert experiences sawmills, riverboats, hop fields, field work, and the wilderness of Oregon.

Kesey, Ken. Sometimes a Great Notion. New York: Viking, 1964.

This book tells of life among the loggers of Oregon. Through vivid descriptive passages, Kesey relates the hardships, struggles, and tragedies of working people in a contemporary setting.

Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1976.

A novella based on Maclean’s youth in Missoula, Montana. Many of the incidents are of Maclean’s memories of his father and brother. The Big Blackfoot River of Montana and trout fishing are important elements in this book.

Roethke, Theodore. Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966. Roethke lived in Seattle for the last 15 years of his life. The influence of the Northwest is clear in these poems.

Stevens, James F. Big Jim Turner. Garden City: Doubleday, 1948.

Jim Turner is a Northwest working man. Based on Stevens’s own experience riding the rail looking for work, this novel recounts life in the mining camps, logging camps, and sawmills of Washington and Oregon. ■ ■