Eco-Humanitarianism Parable

Valerie Miner, author of seven novels, three story collections, and two books of nonfiction, has written her latest novel in a prose style perhaps best described as responsible. Its protagonist, Emily Adams, is a pensive, fifty-year-old regional planner who lives and works part of each year in Chicago (with her longtime female partner, a musician), spending a "few weeks each summer" in an ecologically correct cabin in Northern California's lovely Mendocino County. The two co-own the land with a small group of similarly minded women who live in comparably tiny, tucked-away cabins, and who respectively do all kinds of good—far too much good, I fear, to ring realistic. They bake, teach, coach, tutor, organize, volunteer, cook and sew, garden, paint, build, make art, midwife, play softball, and still find time to support one another at every level: a multitasking, mini-Berkeley commune in the Mendo hills.

Following the sudden loss of her beloved partner—an early plot turn that feels stagey in its abruptness—Emily must decide when, and whether, to pack up and go back to Chicago; ultimately, she must come to terms with grief and re-engage Life and Love. A vengeful arsonist and vagaries of romance add sub-threads to a story which meanders comfortably (with Emily) among its principals: the little group of intrepid women, their partners and visitors, Mexican Americans, Native Americans, religious fundamentalists, Emily's brother Michael (an amicable lawyer who rather conveniently has plenty of money), children, animals, and of course, the land itself.

Most of the exposition arrives in big clumps, bagged in nets of Emily's musings: country versus city, textures of seasons, right livelihood, family, aging and mortality, geography and weather, history, indigenous archeology (Emily finds Pomo Indian relics on her property), sexuality and relationship, clear-cutting, marijuana versus viticulture, outdoor privies, wildlife, special recipes. Miner has lived part-time in the area for fifteen years (noted in the acknowledgments) and done exhaustive research:

Okay, so human settlement was never victimless. But there were degrees of encroachment. Worse in many ways than the farmers and ranchers were the damn timber companies. For decades Louisiana Pacific, Masonite, and other firms had been stripping the hillsides raw. At least the Indians and the European farmers lived directly off the land. The timber barons kidnapped whole corners of the environment.

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Of course she and Salerno (and Virginia and Ruth and Lindsey) represented yet another observable social phenomenon—middle-aged professionals who had saved enough money to build a weekend getaway or who had relocated from the fast track to pursue their art and baking and politics and furniture making. You couldn't help being affected by the natural beauty here. As a regional planner she was curious about how each community, each individual, responded to the geography differently and altered the landscape in large or small ways.

This writing means to teach. It is thoughtful and careful, grammatical and clear. It is also curiously flat-footed; it lacks music, surge, and also (paradoxically) the tensile irony of a sensibility aware of its own exertions, that marks a fictive voice. It's also nonstop telling, telling, telling. In "As a regional planner she was curious" we hear the incongruously crisp, public-service agenda, a docent's explicative voice. Perhaps sensing the danger of lapsing into constant lecture-mode, Miner works to not stint on story. Main characters form a lovable, if thin, ensemble. Sensory details are plentiful and homey: meals eaten, walks taken, flora and fauna admired, fragrances breathed, music savored, comfort found in friends and wilderness. The novel seems to want to gently steer readers toward a quality of reflection that, by implication, will awaken a reinvigorated practice of moral action on the planet.

A mouthful? Yes. A bookful. Miner has also declared, both on her website and in this book, an abiding fascination with the idea of home:

This year [Emily] had become interested in—no, obsessed by...issues of home and ownership and trespassing.... She had learned that the Pomos had held...