Customer Reviews

Going to Bend: A Novel

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Everything there is to know about Hubbard, a small tourist town on the hard-weather coast of Oregon, is succinctly rendered in the first two paragraphs of Diane Hammond's Going to Bend. The real story begins in the third paragraph: "In this town ...lived two women..."

Since an accidental seating arrangement in third grade, Petie (Patricia) Coolbaugh and Rose Bundy have been best friends. Each is 31 years old now. The stark differences between the two and a clear summary of their long relationship are nailed-down-solid in a few well-crafted sentences.

From that point forward, a remarkably poignant story unfolds - but ever-so-gently; easing the reader slowly into a vice-grip awareness of hidden circumstances that made Petie and Rose the formidable survivors they are today - and poised them to soon make decisions that would change their lives forever.

In case it's helpful to anyone: thrillers are my usual choice (you know, the books that grab you by the throat on page one and nearly choke you to death on adrenaline before you find out who did it, on the last page.) While Going to Bend is absolutely nothing like that, it's intriguing and even thrilling at a whole different level. Hammond's incredibly skillful writing, interesting characters, and very good story pulled me in quickly and held me tightly until the last wonderful sentence. Along the way I smiled a lot and, every now and then, had to press a hand to my aching heart - and blink back tears - so I could go on reading. Today, a month after finishing the book, Petie and Rose are as easily and fondly remembered as any of my real-life friends.

Diane Hammond is a great story teller.

This was one of my favorite books since reading Adriana Trigiani's "Big Stone Gap" trilogy. Very similar-small town setting, characters struggling with finding meaning in their lives. Hammond does an excellent job interlacing the past into the present which gives insight into each of the characters. My heart ached as I began to understand Petie and her struggles. The story starts off a little slow, but by the middle of the book, I just couldn't put it down! I realized that the "simple" life can be just as complicated as the hustle and bustle of life in the big city-same challenges trying to find happiness, but it's all in your willingness to find it. I can't wait to read another of Hammond's novels!

"Going to Bend" is a bittersweet tale of "friends-for-life", Petie Coolbaugh and Rose Bundy. The two thirty-something women have lived most of their lives in the tiny coastal fishing town of Hubbard, Oregon, where scraping out a living is a challenge for all.

As the story opens, Petie and Rose have started a new job together, being the soup cooks for a new restaurant in town called Souperiors. The restaurant is struggling from the start, mostly because the menu is so different from the burgers and fries that the town is used to. But the struggles at the restuarant only mirror the constant turmoils in Rose and Petie's lives, as we share their struggles with husbands and boyfriends, difficulties with children, and the challenges of Petie's husband to find a job. Through flashbacks, the reader learns of Petie's difficult childhood, with her mother dying of cancer when Petie was ten, and then her subsequent life with her abusive father.

Author Hammond does a fabulous job of breathing life into the characters of the book. I felt like I knew the main characters so well, and felt for every difficulty they encountered along the way. "Going to Bend" is a wonderful tribute to the power of friendship, and also a testament to the power of searching for happiness in a difficult life. Diane Hammond has just written a second novel called "Homesick Creek" and I have high hopes that it will be a great read too.

NOT Alice Munro but still pretty darn good-NOT 5 star dining but tasty and quite nutritious--I was sorry to say goodbye to all of her characters (well ok not so much for Old Man!)

much like Fanny Flagg-good fun, good feeling and makes you just feel GOOD--which in this day and age is sorta -well-good!?

please keep writing and maybe bring back a few of these characters

Conceived with heart, mind, and pen, Diane Hammond's debut novel takes place in small town Hubbard, Oregon. It is "...one of the oldest no-account towns on the coast of Oregon. Men there fished commercially or helped others deep-sea fish for sport.....They lived hard, bore scars, coveted danger and died either young and violently or unnecessarily old. The women worked, or not. The children belonged to them."

The story focuses on two women; they're best friends, have been for as long as they can remember. Both are now in their thirties. Rose is a Mother Earth type, warm, nurturing. Petie is "small and hard and tight and flammable, like the wick of a candle."

In order to augment their almost nonexistent incomes the two begin working together as soup cooks in a newly opened restaurant, Superior's Café. It's a strain rising at dawn's first light to make soup from scratch, but their efforts are well received.

Nadine and Gordon are the restaurant's owners. They're fraternal twins and an unlikely pair to make their home in Hubbard, but they fled stress city, L.A., for a quieter place so Gordon, who is terminally ill, might find some peace.

As the lives of Rose and Petie unfold we meet a host of characters including Jim Christie, a commercial fisherman; Ryan, the youngest of Petie's boys who is quiet and a bit of a bookworm. His father has a harsh description of him, while Petie concedes that he's a bit "odd" - at least for Hubbard, Oregon.

Life is not easy for any of these folks yet we are reminded through them that there is happiness to be found in the most unexpected places and even in inauspicious events. We are also reminded of the strengths of an enduring friendship - "...your mom may let you down, your boss may let you down, life may let you down...but your best friend never will."

With her first novel Diane Hammond shows herself to be a writer of note. She has served as a spokesperson for the Oregon Coast Aquarium and, yes, she has lived in Bend, Oregon.

- Gail Cooke

At first glance, Hubbard, Oregon, doesn't have a lot to brag about. This nondescript Pacific Ocean town, dependent on fishing and the occasional tourist for its perilous economic survival, confronts grey, gloomy skies and seemingly interminable rain. There are no colleges nearby, no cultural attractions, nothing which could attract visitors to stay. But in Diane Hammond's hands, Hubbard has an internal life that is both distinct and universal. The characters who populate her warm and affecting debut novel, "Going to Bend," are complicated, bruised and determined people. Each has his or her distinctive heartbreak, and each earnestly, clumsily but steadfastly finds a way to endure, even to prevail.

The novel focuses on the friendship between tough-as-nails Petie Coolbaugh and mother-earth-type Rose Bundy, but Hammond suffuses this friendship with the tormented past of Petie and the unsure present of Rose. Not only do the two women complement each other, their differing perspectives, attitudes and behaviors give depth and heft to the narrative. Petie has suffered terribly in her life; emotionally and sexually abused as a child, she has hardened herself to life and allowed her horizons to shrink. She is as fog-shrouded as Hubbard when it comes to opening herself to life. Unaware that she exudes a powerful sexuality, Petie languishes in a loveless marriage and laments the condition of her two sons, the eldest a sensitive child who is dominated by his learning-challenged younger sibling.

Rose's quandary is quieter, but just as significant. Involved with a soft-spoken fisherman who stays but several months a year with her, Rose accepts the temporary while yearning for permanence. Her blossoming teen-age daughter, who is only now coming-to-grips with her sexuality, suddenly intertwines herself in her mother's understated and ill-defined relationship with Jim Christie.

As Hammond develops Petie's growing disaffection with the restricted boundaries of her life and Rose's determined efforts to provide coherence to her own, the author gracefully explores how two small-town women broaden their emotional boundaries. Petie and Rose develop a business relationship with a couple that has inexplicably moved to Hubbard from Los Angeles. Nadine and Gordon atypical restaurant owners; Gordon has AIDS and Nadine devotes herself to his care. Petie and Rose do much more than prepare homemade soups; they progressively incorporate these two strangers into the warp and woof of Hubbard life.

It is this quality of inclusion that gives "Going to Bend" its optimistic flavor. Amidst the sorrows of childhood abuse, alcoholism, sterile marriage, terminal illness and existential loneliness, Petie and Rose summon the courage to live honorable, full lives. It is the mortar of friendship that permits them to do so.