Skookum by Shannon Applegate
In 1843, brothers Jesse, Lindsay, and Charley Applegate--accompanied by their wives and twenty-two children--led the first wagon train from Missouri to Oregon. By the end of the decade, the restless clan had left the crowded Willamette Valley and pointed their wagons toward Yoncalla in southern Oregon's Umpqua Valley. There, Charley built an immense two-story frame home--with one side for men, the other for women. A single fireplace, which opened toward both sides of the house, ensured that only the smoke was permitted to mingle. The divided house in Yoncalla is at the heart of Shannon Applegate's Skookum, a powerful 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. Their experiences encompass many of the predominant historical themes of the early American West: the effects of the intermittent gold rushes, the troubled relations between settlers and Indians, the use of land and other natural resources. Yet Shannon Applegate 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. (Skookum is Chinook jargon for strong, power, full of spirit.) Her female kin kept the time by cherishing and protecting the thousands of family letters, journals, recollections, manuscripts, sketchbooks, and photographs. Tied into neat bundles and stored for years in chests of aromatic cedar and Douglasfir, these family treasures infuse Skookum's narratives with the powerful presence of the past. Out of these richly detailed sources. Shannon Applegate has fashioned a compelling, imaginative saga that brings her extraordinary family and the emerging West dramatically to life.
Father Michael Mueller, C.SS.R., was born in 1825 at Germany. He later joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, and was one of eleven clerics sent to the United States by the American Redemptorist Provincial. Upon completion of his theology studies in Maryland, he was ordained in 1853 by John Nepomucene Neumann. He served the Redemptorist communities in the U.S. as Consulter to the Provincial, as well as Superior and Novice Master. Father Mueller is the author of The Blessed Eucharist, Prayer: The Key to Salvation, Triumph of the Blessed Sacrament, The Prodigal Son, and God the Teacher of Mankind. He died in 1899.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780688053505 |
| ISBN 10 | 0688053505 |
| Title | Skookum |
| Author | Shannon Applegate |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Beech Tree Paperback Book |
| Year published | 1988-10-01 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Oregon Book Awards (Nonfiction) 1989 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |