Lyric River: a novel

Mac Griffith

Basalt Books

Ben Wallace moves to a small Colorado mountain town with Sarah, his young daughter. Ben is a skeptic, but he doesn't mind renting his attic room to someone claiming to be God, especially since this God is troubled by his own grave doubts. Ben does not even mind that God mooches beer and is indifferent about paying the rent. Ben is less concerned with God's aggravating ways than he is with figuring out how it might be okay to leave one woman he loves for another woman he loves. Ben's marriage to Karen, volatile, ambitious child of the city, is fraying, and the unraveling quickens when he meets Megan, serene child of the mountains, child of a crazy, murdered father. Ben navigates the turbulent end of his relationship with Karen, falling in love with Megan, and rearing Sarah. Megan's brother violently opposes the relationship between Ben and Megan, for reasons buried in their childhood. Ben and Megan are forced to journey into the abandoned mine that contains these childhood secrets, igniting a dangerous confrontation. Typical small-town characters include George, contrarian newspaper editor, who spends his evenings in the Moose Jaw, drinking beer and arguing, if necessary, against his own editorials. Billy, the largest man in the county, dropped out of high school to drive a snowplow, and wanders the mountains, looking for the footprints of Thoreau and the secrets of Megan's childhood. Iris, Ben's rich, imperious neighbor, descendent of ranchers, loves Ben and Sarah and Megan; Iris also loves to hit anyone who vexes her over the head with a beer bottle; Iris is sorely vexed by Megan's brother, Tyler, who follows dangerously in their father's religiously demented footsteps.

Lyric River

Literature & Fiction

Griffith, Mac

Literary

As a youngster growing up in a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, suburb, Tom Haig ran wild with the neighborhood's kids. By seventh grade, the thirst for adventure and fearlessness he learned from them led him to springboard diving. "When I was older and experienced, I would feel, deep in my soul, that I was a diver." 
After graduating from the University of Illinois, Tom flew to Luxembourg on his first international trip. Despite being broke, hungry, and far from a flight home, he and his brother Dan headed to Venice, Italy. "Without any warning, the greatest and most powerful epiphany of our lives unfolded. We looked back at the paths we'd chosen to get to this starving moment, and concluded that not only had we made the right choice to stretch things to the limit, we were committed to continue to make those same kinds of decisions the rest of our lives." And so began The Bridge to Venice Rule. 
Living by that pact, Tom started work as a performance diver in Missouri. Several times a day, he climbed to a small platform, lit himself on fire, and dove seventy miles per hour into a shallow lake. Soon he was traveling all over the world, including to the 1989 Acapulco Cliff Diving Contest. In France he fell in love with cycling and carried a new passion back to Portland, Oregon, until one Sunday morning in September 1996. He crashed headfirst into a truck and found himself living a very different life from a wheelchair. His recovery--mentally, physically, and emotionally--was excruciating. "I'd been in car accidents, fallen from water towers, and landed flat on my back from 70-foot multiple somersaulting dives. No crying. I used to swear, jump up and down, and tell jokes. Anything but cry. I was going to have to learn how to cry again, or I wasn't going to survive. Then again, I wasn't sure if I wanted to survive."\nIn Global Nomad, Tom shares his early free-wheeling life with its exciting cities and colorful personalities, and his extraordinary post-accident return to The Bridge to Venice Rule--racing in marathons, traveling solo in some of the world's poorest countries, meeting the Dalai Lama, jamming with jazz great Oscar Klein, holding disability seminars, and starting the International Rehabilitation Forum with his physician brother, Andy. In the process, he bares the unvarnished aftermath and heartbreaking vulnerabilities that follow permanent paralysis, and inspires us all to take risks and live remarkable, generous, lives.

Global Nomad: My Travels Through Diving, Tragedy, and Rebirth

Haig, Tom

Religion & Spirituality

"Dad's eyes danced. His grin held happiness...hope. 'We're home!' he announced. Mom stared out the pickup window. Silent. Lifeless...Tufts of skinny grass and small grayish green bushes surrounded us. The land lay flat in every direction as far as I could see." 
Helen Lingscheit Heavirland spent her early years in western Oregon's beautiful woods, where her father Wayne Lingscheit's work as a logger provided a comfortable home. But Wayne dreamed of farming, and Columbia Basin Project irrigation opened a new opportunity. In 1954 he and his wife Gladys moved their family--seven-year-old Helen, baby Hazel, twelve-year-old Frank, and fifteen-year-old Emma--to raw land in Pasco, Washington, that was mostly bunchgrass and sagebrush. The only structures were a roofless outhouse, an eight-foot by sixteen-foot wooden shack, and a pen for sheep and goats. 
In Surviving the Sand, Helen shares her family's hardscrabble yet heartwarming story, chronicling common hardships many faced in the Columbia Basin Project's early settlement days. She describes breaking sod, plants destroyed by wind-whipped sand, and a harrowing first winter sleeping outside after a storm shredded their tent, but also simple joys like fresh apricots, Crokinole games, and letters from loved ones. Most of all, she relates how--despite the heartache, arduous work, and tough times--her family loves, laughs, and works together as they chase her father's seemingly impossible dream.

Surviving the Sand: My Family's Struggle to Farm the Pasco Desert

Biographies & Memoirs

Heavirland, Helen Lingscheit

Historical

Enamored by the western frontier, British immigrant Cashup Davis, his wife Mary Ann, and nine children became one of the first white families to settle on the Palouse's spectacular rolling hills in eastern Washington Territory. Living at first in a simple sod house, they turn their bunchgrass acreage into a farm, befriend Native Americans during a war ignited by the U.S. government's treaty violations, and eventually open an immensely popular and prosperous stagecoach stop. But Cashup has another dream: he is resolutely determined to build a grand luxury hotel on one of the region's highest points, the summit of Steptoe Butte. People tell him it is a ridiculous idea, but Cashup never listens to the doubters. He's brash, confident, and ever so charming. 
The story is told through the eyes of his great-grandson, Gordon Davis, who views Cashup as the "secret mentor" he never met. As Gordon has achieved success in his life and turned to philanthropy, he has sought to better understand his own good fortune by delving into his great-grandfather's astonishing past. Cashup's life prompts questions that are still relevant today: What is real success? Does it blind people to other joys in life? How should people balance risk and reward? 
Cashup's hotel opened on July 4, 1888, and he became one of Washington's first national celebrities. But no one--especially Gordon--expected what happened next.

Cashup Davis: The Inspiring Life of a Secret Mentor

Burnside, Jeff

Davis, Gordon W.

Community & Culture

Across the nation every two years, first-time lawmakers enter state legislatures--institutions steeped in tradition, arcane procedures, and unwritten rules. Although dozens of publications advise candidates on how to run and win campaigns, for those elected, few resources exist. After more than twenty years in the Washington State Legislature, Senator Karen Keiser realized she could address that knowledge gap. Written for legislative newcomers and others interested in state government, her book blends documented research with her personal experiences and observations about how to succeed and achieve real change. She focuses on the culture adjustment and challenges many newly elected lawmakers face, and offers tips and advice to help them achieve their legislative goals.

Getting Elected is the Easy Part: Working and Winning in the State Legislature

Keiser, Karen

Leaders & Notable People

Washington State's Round Barns: Preserving a Vanishing Rural Heritage

Arts & Photography

Bartuska, Tom

Bartuska, Helen

Architecture

Forest Under Siege: The Story of Old Growth After Gifford Pinchot

History

Schenck, Rand

Americas

Celebrating Palouse Country: A History of the Landscape in Text and Images

Scheuerman, Richard

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