From Minnesota's Star Tribune, on Memorial Day Weekend:
"At times her (Heather Lende's) voice, which alternates between folksy and formal, playful and prayerful, entertaining and elegiac, is reminiscent of Garrison Keillor, Krista Tippett, Tom Bodett, Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamott. But Lende has a freshness that keeps her from being too derivative, and Alaska's geography, history and culture strongly flavor her work."
"Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs celebrates the resilience of ordinary people, gathered together to help one another with the business of living and dying. Reading this memoir is like listening to an old friend....The effect is pleasantly intimate, as if we were sitting next to her on the Juneau ferry." -Bookpage
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Of Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs,The Boston Globe said:
Take a hike, Sarah Palin. Here is the real thing — good old-fashioned American values coming from small-town Alaska. In a cozy, chatty voice, Heather Lende tells stories of life in Haines, Alaska, where, as the title of her first book claims, “If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name.” In fact, she knows not only the names but also the stories of all her neighbors — the protective owner of the vicious dog that preys on her chickens, the men who hunt and cook bear with her husband, the women who can salmon, sing in the church choir, and survive or succumb to cancer, and the young man who runs her over with his truck and shatters her pelvis, as well as the volunteer fireman and ambulance crew who save her life.
The L.A. Times said:
Heather Lende is one of those increasingly rare species: a small-town newspaper reporter. She has lived for 25 years in Haines, Alaska, where she writes obituaries for the Chilkat Valley News and a regular column on daily life in a small town for the Anchorage Daily News. In April 2005 she was riding her bike when she fell and was run over by Kevin, the local grocery store manager, in his truck. This is the story of her recovery, with the help of friends, family and all kinds of people in her community, but it is also the story of how she found true grace and gratitude. A year after the bike accident, Lende's mother, one of those equally rare utterly stable role models, died of leukemia. "Take good care of the garden and dogs," she said before she died. Writing a small town's obituaries gave Lende a good platform from which to carry out her mother's advice. The book is full of vivid characters (a librarian who collects overdue books in person) and strange, sad deaths. Lende is not one for looking back. She has a simple, chatty style most readers will find oddly comforting. Life does, in fact, go on.
Read a nice review of Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs from Washington, D.C. (On The Book Studio, a great book lovers site.)
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs is an Indie Next Pick for June!
Take Note: The Dates and Times for the 2010 May/June Book Tour are now available. Click here. (Or is it there?)
From from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill's Spring Catalog:
Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs
By Heather Lende
ISBN 978-1-56512-568-1 $22.95 Hardcover Release date May 18, 2010
The Alaskan landscape — so vast, dramatic, and unbelievable — may make it easier to believe that something or someone greater is in charge. Haines resident Heather Lende wonders whether that’s why people in her town (population 2,400) so often discuss the meaning of life. She thinks it helps make life mean more.
Lende, who writes local obituaries and has been called "part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott" by the Los Angeles Times, revealed in her first book a deep awareness of what links all humanity. Since then, she was run over by a truck in an almost fatal cycling accident and has had a few more reasons to consider matters both spiritual and earthly. In Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs we meet the community that helped her get back on her feet: the eccentric, fiercely independent, always fascinating residents of Haines—Buddhists, bear hunters, librarians, and Tlingit Indians, and her large, lively family. We follow Lende as she attends her small Episcopal church, cares for her mother (the title is her final communication with the family) and wonders how to relate to the driver who hit her and how not to faint with joy as she finally walks down to the beach for her daughter’s wedding. By the time we reach a certain age, most of us have been hit by trucks, in one way or another, Lende says. She shows us that our responses to those setbacks have everything to do with faith.
Booklist *Starred Review* for Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs:
"Lende writes emotionally but never sentimentally, giving us the best Alaska memoir of late, maybe the best ever."- Booklist Starred review.
Read the whole thing:
While biking downtown, daydreaming about her upcoming tour for If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name (2005), Lende was hit by a truck. Literally. It ran over her torso. So no tour, but the makings of another book, which moves as far beyond the clichés of the hurt-but-heroic personal-triumph genre as Lende’s town, Haines, Alaska, is from . . . well, even Juneau and Anchorage, to say nothing of the world Outside. What distinguishes it is Lende’s relationship with her community and her faith, both of which present challenges as well as comforts. Small town Alaskan life ain’t easy. Far too many are lost to alcoholism, weather, violence, and accidents at sea and in the wild. Lende should know: she writes the local paper’s obits. Friendships, family, and natural beauty sustain her and other survivors. As for her faith, it isn’t always easy, either. So few meet in her Episcopal congregation’s borrowed quarters that they have an unpaid vicar rather than a priest. God doesn’t always seem to answer; why, for instance, does Lende’s beloved mother go down to death still fighting, while an Alaskan friend passes away in beatific calm? Sometimes her moral compass seems to roll around rather than point north. Lende writes emotionally but never sentimentally, giving us the best Alaska memoir of late, maybe the best ever. —Patricia Monaghan
"Amiable in Alaska and slightly left of center, projecting the warmth of a well-made campfire."- Kirkus Reviews
The Whole Kirkus Review:
A popular essayist in Haines, AK, follows her prior excursion (If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, 2005) with a report on, among other relevant matters, what it’s like to be hit by a truck.
In fact, Anchorage Daily News (and now Alaska Dispatch) columnist Lende was “run over by a truck…flown out of town, put back together, hospitalized, and finally placed in a nursing home a thousand miles away from home until I was strong enough to travel.” After such a life-threatening experience, the author did what came natural to her—she wrote about it. Now recovered and back to consider some timeless values, she proves a skilled observer of nature in the wild and nature in human form. She is the coach of the local track ( actually it's a cross-country team) wife and mother of five and a winsome reporter on people old and young, including dear friends, stalwart citizens and brave neighbors. Lende provides pointed thoughts on mortality, occasioned only partly by the death of a parent (the book’s title was her mother’s valedictory); touches of Tlingit native philosophy; and reflections on the blessing of the fleet and the erection of a modern totem pole. The author loves her Alaskan home, where she can see soaring eagles, bears and other natural wonders, and her cozy whimsy is refreshing, as when she discusses her fondness for her chickens. “I know chickens are not the most intelligent of creatures,” she writes, “but my hens have been raised to believe the world is good and that they are loved.”
My favorite:
"I am the most unemotional of people, but Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs had me both laughing and crying, sometimes on the very same page. I am also irreligious and allergic to dogma, but the genuineness of Heather Lende's experience and her thoughtfulness about life's bad breaks and unexpected gifts-- expressed so well in her fine and funny writing-- make me want to ordain her as the goddess of good sense and song. It would be a lucky thing to live by the water in Haines, Alaska and have Lende as a neighbor; the next best thing may be reading this book"
-- Alaska Writer Laureate Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp: Life on and Alaskan Shore and Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life.
"Heather Lende continues to explore small-town life in the last frontier with profound reflections on motherhood, mercy, and the art of mending. Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs will touch your heart and soul and give you much to think about long after you've turned the last page."
--Jo-Ann Mapson author of The Bad Girl Creek Trilogyy and The Owl & Moon Cafe.
"This book is a wonder. It authentically opens a door to Alaskan living, a world that, for most, will be surprising and beautiful. The same door opens to a world of the soul and spirit that will seem familiar and new at the same time. It is one of the best books on theology and spirituality that I have read in a long time."
- The Rt. Rev. Mark MacDonald, formerly Bishop of Alaska, now National Indigenous Anglican Bishop of Canada
