Seasons of Death and Life: A Wilderness Memoir by Maggie Ross, and: Edges of the Earth: A Man, A Woman, A Child in the Alaskan Wilderness by Richard Leo (review)

Reviews 155 The book includes tales of diverse characters, such as farm boys who learn the facts of life; a mother who subjects her children to late-night bedbug raids; a sensitive, dreamy bankrobber who pleads insanity because of schizophrenia; and a red-haired schoolteacher who (it is said) entertains men in her hotel room. The book also includes more sobering tales, like the horrors experienced during the influenza epidemic of 1918. Throughout these tales, Cheney pro­ vides us with an entertaining and informative look at the folkways of pioneer community life. ^JJETSY WARD Utah State University ^Seasons ofDeath and Life: A Wilderness Memoir. By Maggie Ross. (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990. 211 pages, $19.95.) ^Jíáges ofthe Earth: A Man, A Woman, A Child in the Alaskan Wilderness. By Richard Leo. (New York: Henry Holt, 1991. 303 pages, $19.95.) Both of these books are about wilderness, although in wildly different ways. In Maggie Ross’s intensely personal yet confusingly oblique memoir, wilderness is a place of escape from a world of cruelty and pain. Wilderness provides solitude, a haven in which healing can occur. In Richard Leo’s recollections, wilderness is the presence of something more—not healing, but fulfillment. In Seasons ofLife and Death, an Anglican solitary nun, wounded in unidenti­ fied ways, arrives in the wilderness of a Northwestern coastal canyon. She forms an intimate attachment to a neighbor, “Muskrat,” and comforts her as her husband Eddie suffers and dies. Later, she undergoes life-threatening surgery with Muskrat at her side, and then leaves Muskrat and the canyon for good because she “has to.” Readers are left to imagine for themselves what originally caused all the pain and suffering with which the book is concerned, as well as what caused the writer to have to leave Muskrat and the canyon. Against the background of this blurry story, wilderness appears in fantasti­ cally vivid ways: a white wolf with a bullet in its shoulder; a pet raven, rescued from a vulture; a storm that throws trees onto the cabin. However, the animals and landscapes are not real presences in the book. They provide a setting and they function as symbols—sometimes cloyingly so. The book ends with the pet raven flying awaywith a wild mate just as the writer takes her leave of the canyon: “‘Good-bye, Raven,’ I cried, and she replied, calling as she followed the sum­ mons of her life’s partner, calling until she was out of sight, and out of hearing.” Richard Leo’s book is a little more about wilderness and a lot easier to follow. Young Leo is exhausted by the superficiality of New York, and so departs for Alaska with his companion, Melissa. They have a child together, but we know from the beginning that the relationship will not last. We witness, from a distance, the inevitable parting. The distance is Leo’s own mind and narrative, 156 Western American Literature in which Melissa fails to appear with any depth. Her incapacity for wilderness is linked to her vulnerability to fundamentalism, her tears and inarticulateness. As he grows in his wild delight for wilderness, her appearances wither away alto­ gether. Leo’s prose is straightforward and spare, and there is no braggadocio in his accounts, yet he emerges in the narrative as his own self-made Hero. He knew who he had to become in order to be a hero to himself, and he did not waver. He overcame weather, wild animals, personal sorrow, loneliness, self-doubt. He carried materials for great distances to his homestead, and built his shelter by hand. In addition, Leo took responsibility for the care of his young son. The most memorable scenes in the book are of Leo and two-year-oldJanus sledding through high wilderness in winter on extended camping trips. Each of these books is predominantly autobiography, and only subordi­ nate^ about wilderness. In fact, as books about wilderness, they are obscured by the dominance of single-voiced narrators who, intentionally or not, make their own psychologies the subject of the writing. However, as wilderness autobiogra­ phies, each has its measure of success. CROSSWHITE University of Oregon .^J^ochsa Road: A...