And the Desert Shall Blossom by Phyllis Barber (review)

Reviews 251 The Man WhoFell in Love with the Moon. By Tom Spanbauer. (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991. 358 pages, $21.95.) When the Mormons come to town in Tom Spanbauer’s uproarious tale of the Wild West, they are led on their divine quest for gold by the Reverend Brother Josiah Helm. Any resemblance between this hypocrite and his near namesake, a certain modern-day, uptight Senator from North Carolina, is undoubtedly intentional. Rev. Helm and his fellow fanatics intend to clean up Excellent, Idaho, ridding it of those “pernicious elements”who aren’t fit to live among pious, civilized, gold-grabbing people. That means, first and foremost, that Ida Richelieu’s notorious pink whorehouse must go. By this point in the novel, Ida and her friends are well on their way to violating every sexual taboo studied by Freud—and are, in Spanbauer’s view, better people for it. There’s Shed, the half-breed bisexual boy, who narrates this incredible fable; and the moonstruck cowboy named Dellwood Barker, also bisexual. Completing this makeshift family of proud sexual deviants is Ida’s best female prostitute, Alma, whose loud orgasms are a local legend. Exceeding mere bawdiness, The Man WhoFell in Love with the Moon is subversively raunchy. In the Idaho of Spanbauer’s frenetic, madcap imagination, absolutely anything goes. Anyone who objects . . . well, that person’sjust a Mormon. PAUL HADELLA Southern Oregon State College And theDesert Shall Blossom. By Phyllis Barber. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1991. 281 pages, $23.95.) When you reach the last page of Phyllis Barber’sAnd theDesert ShallBlossom, you will experience a frisson of the soul, revealing the presence of a miracle. This miracle is the completion of the Hoover Dam, the culmination of one family’s destiny, and the epiphany of the novel itself, an extraordinary work of art, history and love. Barber has recreated in fiction the nature-defying spectacle of the diversion of the Colorado River, a project undertaken in the midst of the Great Depres­ sion, one which would take 110 workers’ lives, “one man for every half-million dollars spent,” and change the geography of the West forever. A 727-foot-high barrier set against the river. Beautiful, yet foreign. An alien white monument to science holding back an unreal blue reservoir called Lake Mead, where blowing dust, sluggish mud, and a red river had reigned for millions of years, maybe. Who knew for sure what other elements, oceans, or upheavals preceded this giant under­ taking, or what might come after? 252 Western American Literature The dam is as much a character in the novel as Esther and AlfJenson and their family, whose lives ebb and rush in the eddying of the Colorado, some of them breaking at the dam itself, some finding power in its awe-full achievement. Esther, a believing Mormon full of song and despair, cannot share her husband’s joy in the earth-moving mania. “Look what they’ve done to my beautiful river,”she cries. When Alflooks at the dam, he sees progress, mastery. “A rite of passage for a concrete adolescent about to enter the serious business of making power and controlling water.” Barber’s portrayal of the divergent ways this man and this woman under­ stand the Hoover Project may reflect gender-based differences toward the task of altering nature to suit human—or, in the parlance of the day—man’s pur­ poses. While making the opening speech at the completed dam, President Roosevelt tells the crowd: “Ten years ago ... the site of Boulder City was a cactuscovered waste. The transformation wrought here is a Twentieth Century marvel . . . Labor makes wealth. The use of materials makes wealth.”But Esther refuses to participate in that pride: “This dam won’t last anyway. . . . Thou shalt not worship false idols, don’t you remember? Trust not in the arm of flesh.” Readers, however, should trust Barber’s own achievement to guide them safely through the gorgeous turbulence of And theDesert. Shall Blossom. ANNIE DAW1D Lewis & Clark College Step-Mother. By Carol Jean Logue. (Spirit Lake, Idaho: Rosehips Ink, 1990. 306 pages, $29.00.) When was the last time you read from...