The divided house in Yoncalla is at the heart of Shannon Applegate's Skookum, the award-winning chronicle of her pioneer family. With the skill of a historian and the craft of a novelist, Applegate recounts the story of her family over several generations-the dreams, hardships, mysteries, and joys. She looks beyond the well known lives of the Applegate men, in whose honor were named a trail, a town, a river, and a mountain peak, to offer a more intimate history.
Skookum gives voice to the women of the family, who, writes Applegate, "as surely as certain stitches . . . have held the generations together." Her female kin "kept the time" by cherishing and protecting the thousands of family letters, journals, recollections, manuscripts, sketchbooks, and photographs. Tied into bundles and stored for years in chests of aromatic cedar and Douglas fir, these family treasures infuse Skookum's narratives with the powerful presence of the past. Out of these richly detailed sources, Applegate has fashioned a compelling, imaginative saga that brings her extraordinary family and the emerging West dramatically to life.
