I’ve spooned up the bloggy goodness of so many other authors and now I stand ashamed. “J’accuse!” I say to myself. Keeping up with this blogging thing isn’t so easy. And now to make ammends….I’ve been reading
Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison
The only way I would know this author is that his book Legends of the Fall was the basis
for the film with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins. I only picked it up because our very fine rare books librarian recommended it. I recommend so many books to others it seems only fitting that I should take someone else’s advice, as obstinate as I usually am in my reading tastes.
It was well worth the gamble. It’s rather hard to say what this book is about, but I’ll give it a go. It beings with the recollections of a man who is dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He’s reflecting on his life, not with regret, but with contentment about who he is and where he’s been. Of Chippewa and Finnish descent, he is a spiritual man who intends to die with the same dignity with which he lived.
The rest of the story is told by his family, after Donald’s passing. His daughter struggles to make sense of his death by studying and adopting Chippewa spirituality – she hopes to encounter her father in his animal form. Cynthia, Donald’s wife, is bereft despite her attempts to intellectualize his death. She is also at a loss to help her daughter, who she thinks is delusional. Cynthia and her eccentric brother David also try to find redemption from a past which included a horribly abusive father – somehow the manner of Donald’s death leads them to solace.
Having given the storyline, I have to say that this is a book about characters and ideas rather than plot. It’s about the struggle to find meaning in life and to put into context the tragic and sometimes unbearable things that happen to people. The language is beautiful, and there’s a real sense of place – though industry encroaches on the natural world of Michigan, it is the underlying current of the natural world which drives the characters. From the book jacket: “Jim Harrison writes about the heart of this country like no other writer – about the culture of Native America, the natural world and our place in it, the loss that has shaped our history, and the pleasures that raise life to the sublime.”–
