PORT ANGELES — Jonathan Evison was only half-joking when he said he feared sharing his best-selling novel — West of Here — in the city he based it on.
Those fears proved to be unfounded Sunday.
Evison received a warm reception, thoughtful questions and hearty applause from a crowd of about 75 at the Port Angeles Library.
The Bainbridge Island author read excepts from the 486-page epic and answered questions during a 90-minute appearance.
West of Here takes readers through time, into the Olympic Mountains and up and down the Elwha River, through the eyes of blue collar people living in Port Angeles in 1890 and 2006.
It paints Port Angeles as a grimy town with lots of oddballs: from boozy Native Americans to prostitutes to drug-addled youths to Sasquatch hunters.
“In my defense, I did call the town Port Bonita,” Evison quipped.
The book is Evison’s second effort following his critically acclaimed debut novel, All About Lulu.
Before the reading, Evison asked a Peninsula Daily News reporter if locals were “warming up the tar,” as in preparing to tar and feather him.
“I painted sort of a bleak picture of the town,” Evison said.
“And when you live in the town, I don’t think anybody wants to hear — even if they do drive by boarded storefronts and they know certain economic realities — I don’t think anybody wants to hear that about their town, especially from an outsider.”
Evison spends 60 to 100 days of year in the Port Angeles area to recreate in the Olympic Mountains and to research and write his books.
Asked why he called the town Port Bonita instead of Port Angeles, Evison said:
“Because the novel is so much about the trappings of history, I found I didn’t want to be trapped by history myself.”
West of Here is part mythical and part historical. It uses actual place names like the Elwha River, Hollywood Beach and the Bushwhacker restaurant, mixed with a few fictional ones.
The book was spawned by the forthcoming destruction of the two Elwha River dams, but Evison boiled things down to just one dam.
The dam — the central metaphor in the book — was built by a Thomas Aldwell counterpart named Ethan Thornburgh.
West of Here was written from the points of views of Native Americans and white settlers in the 1890s and their descendants living here in 2006. It has limited points of view from 42 characters, including a dying donkey and an infant.
Major themes revolve around the American experience and personal destiny.
Evison said his characters for 21st century Port Angeles are “sort of hard” and “scrabbled.”
“There’s more than a few substance abusers,” he said.
“I was maybe a little bit concerned that people were going to think that was my whole view of what Port Angeles is.
“Like I said, I don’t think that all cross sections of the citizenry are represented here. But for the purpose of the conversation I was trying to start, these were the characters I needed to use.
“I do think that all these characters have one thing in common, which is that they’re all trying desperately to reinvent themselves, to break patterns.”
Evison said he used Port Angeles as the book’s inspiration “because it’s really just a perfect microcosm for the American experience.”
“It’s talking about a culture haunted by its early mistakes, a culture forced to reckon with its early mistakes,” said Evison, who was making his 24th book reading appearance in 28 days Sunday.
West of Here made The New York Times best-seller list shortly after its release.
Asked how he arrived at the title, Evison said it comes down to the question:
“Where do we go from here?”
_______
Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
