PORT TOWNSEND –– A stand of ancient Douglas firs exposed to logging by bureaucratic map adjustments leads a young half-Makah man on a journey to balance the preservation of his place and culture and find out the secrets of his life.
That’s the gist of Walla Walla author Scott Elliot’s recently released Temple Grove.
Elliot will read from his Olympic Peninsula-set novel as the featured speaker at the Jefferson County Historical Society’s First Friday lecture at 7 tonight (Friday).
Elliot’s lecture will be in the City Council chamber, 540 Water St.
Admission is by donation, and proceeds support the historical society’s programs.
The geography of the Olympic Peninsula serves as not just a setting for Elliot’s story, but as a central character, key to driving Elliot’s metaphors and revealing the slow-developing details of Paul Granger, the novel’s teenage protagonist.
Born to a Makah mother and an unknown father, Paul spends his young life roaming the forests of the Peninsula, climbing mountains and working with the Forest Service.
Damaged by his mother’s early desperation, Paul is enlisted by a National Park Service ranger to spike the Temple Grove stand of trees and prevent them from being felled.
In the grove, he runs across a gyppo logger hired to take them down, and the two men square off in a chase that runs through a narrative that shifts through time and perspective.
Along with capturing the natural realism of the Peninsula, Elliot also manages to catch its serious social ills, as poverty, alcoholism and dreams of escape to more prosperity fill the chapters.
At 272 pages, Elliot’s story is filled with native lore and names all too familiar to those who have traveled the Peninsula backcountry gravel roads.
Elliot is an associate professor of creative writing and English at Walla Walla’s Whitman College.
Published by the University of Washington press, Temple Grove is available for $28.95 at www.washington.edu/uwpress, on Elliot’s website http://www.scottelliott.net or on Amazon.
