Product Description

Melding past and present into a moving narrative, Mary Clearman Blew imaginatively recreates the dry, dusty, sparsely populated Montana of the early homesteaders and of her aunt Imogene's young womanhood. Striving to understand why her aunt chose a life alone, away from the ranch where she grew up, Blew evokes the rigors of her own growing-up years. We witness her yearnings for independence and escape; her own choices regarding marriage, divorce, and single parenthood; and the poignant reconnection with her daughter. A rich and unforgettable blend of intimate reflection, diaries, history, and local legend, Balsamroot reveals one of our top writers at her most personal and compelling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1047750 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 211 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The author of the award-winning memoir All but the Waltz here returns to familiar territory to examine the lives of her first-generation Montana-born ancestors. Her parents, born in the early 1900s, remained on their Montana ranch, proudly confronting adversity and drought, raising spirited horses as well as children. But the center of this memoir is the one who got away, Blew's favorite aunt Imogene, who became a schoolteacher, living alone for 40 years in a remote, scenic part of Washington State. Now nearly senile, Imogene, once the author's model of feminine independence, evokes puzzling questions and blurry images for the niece on a parallel life journey that includes divorce and single parenthood. Blew mines the repository of her aunt's memoirs and diaries, uncovering near-revelations that suggest Imogene's life was far from what it appeared to be. The memoir is energized by the search and by the author's connectedness to a Montana heritage.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
As Blew (All But the Waltz, 1991) watches her long-idolized aunt Imogene slide into dementia, she wisely analyzes past and present to create a stronger self and a more honest future. Imogene was born of the stark and dusty Montana plains at a time when women were expected to marry and raise children. Instead, she became a schoolteacher and moved away from her family, as far west as possible, to the end of Washington's Olympic peninsula, to live an independent and solitary life. Things change when Imogene, age 79, wakes up one morning and doesn't remember how to make oatmeal; subsequently she sells her house and moves to Lewiston, Idaho, to be near her niece. At the same time, Blew's daughter from her first marriage, whom she hasn't seen in several years, comes for a visit and announces that she's divorcing her husband and moving to Lewiston to attend veterinary school. If Blew had trouble juggling her seven-year-old daughter Rachel from her second (failed) marriage and teaching grad school and writing, what a shock to find that her aunt, who's always provided a haven in times of distress, now needs care, and her older daughter, who feels so foreign to her (``Depression after my divorce erased my young womanhood...until I feel almost certain that Rachel is the only child I ever had''), might become a friend. While Blew struggles with practical choices, like residential care, she also struggles with spiritual ones, recognizing that she knows nothing of the real Imogene except what she'd needed to see and so has no idea where her aunt goes when she falls ``through the hole in her mind.'' Blew turns to Imogene's journals for clues to break down her family's unstated code--``never speak aloud of what you feel deeply''--and is surprised to find her own voice. Sagebrush and sage. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Mary Clearman Blew is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Idaho, Moscow. She is the author of Bone Deep in Landscape, Balsamroot: A Memoir, Lambing Out and Other Stories, and All But the Waltz (University of Oklahoma Press) and Sister Coyote: Montana Stories and is coeditor of Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women's Writing.

Customer Reviews

Learning While a Caregiver.
Ever wondered what you would do if you were the caregiver to an elderly relative? Mary Blew finds herself pressed into caregiving when her Aunt Imogene calls and says that she is going to move from Port Angeles, Washington to Lewistown, ID to be near Mary. Mary has no idea why her aunt would want to leave her beautiful view of the ocean and surrounding area and questions her. Since their family has tacitly agreed never to speak about what is important, her aunt ambiguously replies that it is because one day she "forgot how to make oatmeal." Blew is confused since Aunt Imogene, whose independence she has long admired, was the steadying rock in her life that offered her support during her two divorces.

Quickly we realize that that Aunt Imogene is suffering from mental lapses that rapidly progress to "dementia" where she flickers arbitrarily between reality and her own world. Dealing with an independent aunt who is struggling to control her life is compounded by Blew's estranged daughter divorcing her husband and moving near her mother. As Blew works to rebuild a relationship with the daughter who she had treated with great reserve, she is forced to revisit her divorces, her treatment of her daughter, and her expectations for life. Then Mary Blew finds and reads her aunt's diaries. Aunt Imogene has never married, and Mary searches the diaries to discover why. Carefully reading between the lines, she finds surprising revelations not only about her aunt but also about her parents and grandparents, thereby overlaying and entwining the lives of four generations. This gives the memoir a fragmented narrative associatively entwining the life of the narrator, her daughter, her aunt, and their ancestors.

Refusing to keep her family's code of silence about important things, Blew shares her findings with her daughter. What she finds are dysfunctional marriages that compel females in her family to strive for personal freedom, females who are unwilling to speak about what really matters, and women with an ability to suppress large parts of their lives. Aunt Imogene has paid dearly for her freedom in Port Angles; however, as she loses her grasp with the world, Mary Blew slowly receives a firmer grasp on her own world. Recognizing destructive familial patterns in herself, Blew intimates that her journey of self-discovery was successful as she takes small steps to spring loose "unacceptable" ideas that she has suppressed.

The Parts Don't Quite Make a Whole
This is a book about a dearly loved aunt's slide into dementia, a book about a tentative reconciliation between mother and daughter, a book about a Montana childhood remembered, and a book about an earlier Montana imaginatively reconstructed from the aunt's fifty years of laconic daily diaries. Just when I would settle into one book, swallowing Blew's often self-pitying tone, wham, off we would go into another book. She is trying for a quilt of a book and leaves us with pieces. But these pieces are often of very good writing indeed, especially the fond anecdotes of the generations of horses which worked the family property. As you read, remember the family motto --"Never speak aloud of what you feel deeply." As often as I was engrossed in what is in this book, I wondered what deliberately is kept out and how other voices -- the daughter and the aunt -- might tell this story.

Balsamroot is a moving, beautiful family memoir
I loved this book and recommend it to any lover of memoir. Mary Clearman Blew renders a heartfelt story about uncovering the mysteries of her Aunt Imogene's life, and in turn, embarking on self-discovery. I suggest first reading "All But the Waltz," which puts Balsamroot in a rich context of family history. It is also a wonderful narrative on its own.