They Married Adventure: The Wandering Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson by Pascal James Imperato, Eleanor M. Imperato (review)

380 Western American Literature Company. He proceeded, researching the literature on sheep ranching in southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon, intermingling stints in the library and trips to various Soulen ranches. He caught up with the numerous bands of sheep and the men who worked them as they moved from lambing quarters at Letha to spring pasture, summer pasture above McCall, fall pasture, and winter pasture near Caldwell. SheepMay Safely Grazecovers the history ofthe Soulen sheep operation, sets forth the pattern of transhumance exemplified by sheep ranchers, and dis­ cusses “the business of sheep ranching”—from shearing and tending, to mar­ keting and land use planning. In the final chapter, Attebery concludes: “Tech­ nologies, instrumentalities of the operations, change, but those are externali­ ties.”Sheep are still managed in the “traditional”fashion. Accompanying the text are sixty black-and-white photographs of sheep wagons, ranges, sheep, shearing facilities, castration practices, camps, food preparation, and pack strings. Additionally, there are five appendixes; one, written by Jennifer Eastman Attebery, contains photographs of the Soulen summer headquarters (log house) in McCall. Attebery demonstrates his skills as a folklorist and scholar, citing historical and contemporarybooks and articles, quoting from interviewswith the Soulens, ranch hands, elders of the dwindling community of sheepmen, and his own assiduously taken notes. Information isabundant, but this book is a pleasure to read because ofAttebery’sunassuming posture as essayist. SheepMay Safely Grazeis informative and amusing. Attebery has a knack for punctuating information with humorous but complex anecdotes that establish setting, delineate character, and expound philosophy. For anyone interested in the mystique of the West or the life of the wandering herdsmen, this book is essential reading. WILLIAM STUDEBAKER CollegeofSouthernIdaho They MarriedAdventure: The WanderingLives ofMartin and OsaJohnson. ByPascal James Imperato and Eleanor M. Imperato. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992. 313 pages, $27.95.) They Married Adventure is a well-researched and extensively documented work covering the livesof ’20s and ’30s husband-and-wife explorer team Martin and Osa Johnson. Although not falling within the domain of literature, the book contains several indirect points ofcontact with relevant issues in contem­ porary studies. For example,Jack and Charmian London provided role models for theJohnsons, and theJohnsons undoubtedly influenced television explorer Reviews 381 teams such as Hans and Lotte Haas and Armand and Michaela Dennis a generation later. The keytheme connecting these issues isgender, especiallyits historical and cultural variations within the entertainment industry. Martin Johnson sailed with the Londons on the ill-fated Snark voyage of 1907-1908, later writing his version of events in Through the South Seas withJack London (1913). The highlypublicized images ofJack and Charmian had several similaritieswith thejohnsons’s. LikeJack, Martin “never deviated from seeking out the exotic and the unusual and from communicating his own interpreta­ tions to large audiences.”Both men had similar early lives and complementary differences. “For Martin,Jack became both hero and model.”The same was not true for Charmian and Osa. “What made Osa most like Charmian was her willingness to assume a role in her husband’s work and to allow this to bind them together. However, Martin appreciated that Osa, unlike Charmian, did not aspire to equality in their relationship.”Despite her potential talents, Osa was always Mrs. Martin Johnson. In contrast to Charmian, she yearned for a home life she never achieved living either in hotels or on safari. The Imperatos’ thorough investigation reveals the more human and fal­ lible sides of the Johnson relationship, one governed by socially proscribed gender models that theJohnsons, unlike the Londons, never managed to react against. If Martin finally achieved his ambition of matching Jack’s fame in his own sphere, he also inherited some of his mentor’s racial prejudices and misconceptions about other cultures such as the Melanesians. Both Martin and Osa remained trapped by social conventions. Apart from one major error (listingJack’sbirth year as 1874), TheyMarried Adventure is a significant work whose associations are relevant to studies of the Londons and of literature in general. Because it highlights the politics of role models and the influential cultural differences mediating public discourses concerning gender issues, it is highly recommendable. TONYWILLIAMS SouthernIllinois University at Carbondale Animals of the Soul: Sacred Animals of the...