PORT ANGELES – Lynda Mapes, who wrote Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe and the Unearthing of Tse-whit-zen Village, is married to Doug MacDonald, the former secretary of the state Department of Transportation and a central figure she interviewed for her book.
In an e-mail to the Peninsula Daily News, Port Angeles City Council member Larry Williams — whom Mapes said in her book was the first public official to suggest in 2003 that Transportation “give Port Angeles some consideration” as the site for the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard, a huge on-shore dry dock — questioned Mapes’ “clarity and objectivity,” given that Mapes and MacDonald are married.
Williams declined to be interviewed about the book.
Construction of the graving yard led to the uncovering of Tse-whit-zen.
Mapes and MacDonald, who live in Seattle, met in Port Angeles in 2004. That’s when she started covering the Tse-whit-zen story for The Seattle Times.
She wrote the book “before we became a couple,” said Mapes, 50.
“The book speaks for itself. I’m not going to talk to you about my personal life.”
MacDonald, 64, said he and Mapes established a bond that centered on Tse-whit-zen beginning in late 2006, before she turned in the book’s manuscript.
“Lynda and I started having longer and longer conversations,” he said.
“We found, in discussing the thing, that we had a lot of share perspectives on it.
“The relationship between Lynda Mapes and me kind of grew out of what happened in the course of a retrospective examination of all that happened up there.
“One thing led to another.”
While Mapes was writing the book, “there was kind of a Chinese wall between me and the book,” MacDonald said.
He reviewed the manuscript, adding corrections before it was published, he said, adding:
“It was well on its way to publication at that point.”
Mapes turned in the manuscript for review in late 2007, she said.
The two were married in December 2007, after MacDonald left Transportation, MacDonald said.
Mapes doesn’t mention their marriage in her book.
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Staff writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
