Above the Clearwater
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By Bette Lynch Husted
2004. 6 x 9 inches. 176 pages.
ISBN 0-87071-007-9. Paperback, $18.95.
Table
of Contents
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"Like the river of its name, Bette Husted's book runs with
clarity and passion. Complex, harsh, and tender, never taking the easy way out,
this memoir is beautiful in its honesty. I never read anything truer to the
Western land and people."
--Ursula K. Le Guin
Like her father before her,
Bette Husted grew up on stolen land. The bench land above the Clearwater
River in north-central Idaho had been a home for the Nez Perce Indians until the Dawes Act opened their
reservation to settlement in 1895. As a child on the family homestead, Husted
felt the presence of the Nez Perce: "But they were always just out of sight,
like a smoky shadow behind me that I couldn?t quite turn around quickly enough
to catch."
Above the Clearwater chronicles her family's history on the land,
revealing their joys and sorrows, their triumphs and tragedies. In a series of
graceful and moving essays, Husted traces this intimate history, from her Cold
War childhood to her struggles as a parent and finally to her life as a woman
and teacher in the rural West. Her family's stories echo those of countless
other families in the American West: the conflicts with guns, the struggles
over land ownership and water rights, the isolation of women, the separations
by race and class, the family secrets of mental illness and suicide.
With a powerful, poetic voice, Husted illuminates the tangled relationship
between the history of a particular place and the history of the families who
inhabit that place over time. As
Above the Clearwater explores one family's
search for a home on land taken from its original inhabitants, it quietly asks
all readers to examine their own homes in the same light.
About the Author
Bette Lynch Husted's stories, essays, and poems have appeared in numerous
journals and anthologies, including
Northern Lights, Northwest Review,
and
Fourth Genre. One of the essays in
Above the Clearwater was
selected as a Notable Essay in
Best American Essays 2000, and another is
included in the anthology,
Best Essays Northwest. She has taught in high
schools and community colleges in Oregon, Washington, and Montana,
and now lives in Pendleton, Oregon.
Above the Clearwater is her first book.
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