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BEING AWAY FROM HIS FAMILY wasn't the only hardship Colton
endured: "The town of Hardin is pretty culturally deprived;
how many times can you see Fern Gully 2?" he says.
"It was 50 miles to the nearest latte. That was hard for
a guy who's a Peet's, Starbucks, Coffee People junkie."
Larry
Colton will read from Counting Coup at Broadway Books,
1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726, at 7 pm Tuesday, Oct. 10.
Each
year the Crows adopt one outsider into their tribe. The
year he was researching his book, they chose Colton,
giving him the tribal name of Well-Known War Dancer.
Larry
Colton's mother has never read Goat Brothers, his
graphic account of his fraternity days, he says, because,
"she doesn't want to know that stuff."
WRITING
HER MEMOIRS forced Lauck to look more carefully at the people
in her life, including her father: "When I would demonize
one person, I'd realize that's not balanced, that's not
true and that's not fair," she says. "So I would go back
and search for their humanity."
Jennifer
Lauck will read from Blackbird at Matisse (1411 NE
Broadway, 287-5414), 6 pm Friday, Oct. 6; Powell's on Hawthorne
(3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 238-1668), 7:30 pm Tuesday, Oct.
10; Broadway Books (1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726), 7 pm Monday,
Oct. 16; and Annie Bloom's Books (7834 SW Capitol Highway,
246-0053), 7:30 pm Thursday, Nov.
9. Free.
Lauck
came to Portland after being canned (over a "personality
conflict" with a staffer) from her television news job in
Spokane. "The day I was fired, I was nominated for five
Society of Professional Journalists awards," she says.
"Momma
and me, pills and water, every day, forever.... I want to
tell her that she's going to get better, that today was
just a bad day, that it's my fault and I'll just try harder
tomorrow." --Blackbird
SULLIVAN
SAYS that as "one of the whitest people to ever visit Neah
Bay, being of Irish extraction and from New York," he was
reluctant to push his subjects too hard: "I didn't want
to ask questions that were rude, so I was constantly not
asking questions."
"He
turned to me and looked up and asked me
to hold out my hand, which I did. He placed in it the heart
of a salmon.
It was small and a deep rich red and it pumped desperately."
--A Whale Hunt
Robert
Sullivan will read from A Whale Hunt at Powell's, 1005
W Burnside St., 228-4651, at 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 27. Free.
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Portland is the best place to be a writer and the worst
place to be a writer. The city is an affordable mecca for
word-addicted artists who crave strong coffee and spirited
conversation. Writers' groups, workshops, small presses
and 'zines sprout up faster than rye grass in early June.
And then there's Powell's.
But for every fat, happy writer in Portland, there are
scores who only dream of making a living peddling words.
There are limited publishing venues here, and most of them
don't pay jack. National magazines are thousands of miles
away in New York City; they may as well be on the moon.
Page 976 of the Portland Yellow Pages devotes more space
to "Livestock Breeders and Dealers" than to "Literary Agents."
But local wordsmiths don't give up. Oregon authors have
cultivated the state's fiction offerings to a national level
with a diverse crop of novels from such people as Katherine
Dunn, Chang-rae Lee, Whitney Otto, Phillip Margolin and
Chuck Palahniuk.
Non-fiction, however, has been a different story. In recent
years, local writers have shifted from dry historical books
about the Oregon Trail or Lewis and Clark to stunning, personal
stories about life in the Northwest. Voyage of a Summer
Sun by Robin Cody, Looking After: A Son's Memoir
by John Daniel and Lars Nordstrom's Making It Home
all won Oregon Book Awards. Still, these stories weren't
huge hits outside of the Pacific Northwest.
That track record is about to change. This month, three
Portland authors--Larry Colton, Jennifer Lauck and Robert
Sullivan--will release major nonfiction books amid a provocative
nationwide buzz: ads in major magazines, whisperings of
movie deals, network television spots.
The three books, while different in tone and topic, share
some traits. All three are written in first-person, taking
the author from scribe to participant--a scary trip for
the writers, all of whom have worked as journalists. Two
of the authors--Colton and Sullivan--never planned to become
so involved with their subjects and were slightly horrified
to find themselves so invested in and intertwined with other
people's lives. Lauck, meanwhile, first tiptoed within for
the story, then stomped into the worn-out territory of childhood
memoir to see whether the literary landscape has room for
yet another heartbreaking tale of abandonment and neglect.
These three authors have one more crucial thing in common:
perseverance, driven by obsession.
Colton spent six long years researching, writing and rewriting
before he held his book in his hands. Lauck bucked the system
to get her childhood memoir published. And Sullivan got
sucked into a major historical event and couldn't get out
until it was all over. These are their stories.
LARRY COLTON:
COUNTING KUDOS
On an ordinary Wednesday afternoon near the end of summer,
Larry Colton's dining room table is an assembly line of
essays, including one about a dog that craps everywhere.
Colton and cohort Peter Sears, a local poet, gently grade
50 papers written by Portland public school teachers, participants
in this year's Community of Writers project. The teachers
are finishing an intensive writing workshop that entitles
them to more benefits throughout the school year: a professional
writer in their classrooms for a month and $400 worth of
books. Colton invented the entire program in the darkest
days of his writing career.
Of the three local writers unleashing their works of non-fiction
this month, Colton is the veteran. He moved to Portland
in 1970, four days after his single-game major-league pitching
career ended with a barroom brawl injury. He chose Portland
because it wasn't in his native California; he didn't know
a soul here. He worked as a teacher's aide, then began teaching
at John Adams High School. In the mid-'70s, he started writing,
barely eking out a living. "My dates would bring wood with
them when they came over, to warm up my house," he recalls.
Colton now lives off six-figure book deals, but it took
incredible effort to reach this level of success.
Riding high on the critical acclaim of his 1993 book, Goat
Brothers, Colton spent 15 months living in Hardin, Mont.,
shadowing Indian teenage basketball players for a new book,
Counting Coup. In 1996, he sent a completed draft
to his publisher. They wrote back, he recalls, and told
him "in no uncertain terms, this is a piece of shit. Don't
even bother to rewrite it, this can't be saved."
In his desperation, Colton clung to the one thing in his
career that was working: his job as a volunteer writing
instructor in the public schools. He figured out a way to
get paid for his efforts, singlehandedly raising more than
$1 million to support the Community of Writers. The success
of the program, along with an unexpected note from the reservation,
gave him the confidence to go back and rewrite Counting
Coup, this time including his own feelings and perceptions
as an integral part of the story about doomed high-school
basketball sensation Sharon LaForge.
Back in his dining room, Colton and Sears discuss the essay
about the crapping canine, finally agreeing that the story
won't be complete unless someone does something about the
dog. Then Colton heads upstairs to his sunny, slightly disheveled
office to discuss the long journey that ended with Counting
Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little
Big Horn.
Willamette Week: What was it like infiltrating Hardin?
Larry Colton: It was one of the most, if not the most,
enriching year of my life. Just immersing yourself into
another culture, not only the Indian culture but the white
culture there. I just woke up every day excited: What am
I going to find today? Some days I'd get into my car and
drive aimlessly, just discovering the geography or hanging
out.
How were you received?
The Crows are not an outgoingly warm people. I'm stereotyping,
but that's just not their way. The whites were very hesitant,
too: Here comes another bleeding-heart liberal to paint
us as the bad people. But the way I gained entry into the
community is, I wasn't there for a week, I was there for
15 months. I became part of the scene. You'd go to the market,
there I'd be. You'd go to the tribal meetings, there I'd
be, and usually, I'd just sit and listen. I just became
part of the community. After a while, I don't think people
knew I was writing a book.
How did your book change from your original idea?
The proposal I sold was the story of the boys, and that
was what I went over there to write about. But the first
time I saw Sharon with the girls' team--the dynamics and
resentment from the white kids and yet acceptance because
she was such a good player--it was just her grace and her
elegance. She's just so gutsy on the court.
What did the publisher think?
When I went to Doubleday and said, "I think this is the
story, not the boys," they balked at it. Goat Brothers
is a book about bad male behavior, and they saw me in this
niche of writing about subcultures of men. So I said, "OK,
I'll cover the boys." I went to every boys' practice, every
game the boys played. I traveled with them. But during that
four months, I knew in my heart that Sharon was the story.
Plus, there were all Indians on the boys' team, whereas
the girls' team was mixed. This book is a profile of racism.
It's just ingrained, that's the way they are.
What did you do when Doubleday rejected your book?
At first I was upset, thinking, "What idiots--they don't
know." And then I realized that it was embarrassing that
I had ever turned it in. It had no point of view, it was
trying to be all these things, and I never took a stance
on anything. Not that I do now, but the change came from
taking a third-person past-tense and rewriting it into a
first-person present-tense. I threw away the whole manuscript
and started completely over.
Did your agent think you were courageous? Or crazy?
I didn't tell my agent. Nobody in New York knew I was doing
it. I got up every morning at six and I'd work until noon.
From noon until 10 o'clock, I'd work on Community of Writers.
It took about nine months. It's the same story with a different
point of view--well, a point of view. So I turned it in.
It was a huge risk, but I thought I'd already blown three
years, even though I got paid for them. But when I turned
it in, I got paid again--I got paid more than I did the
first time. So that was rewarding, and it should be a lesson:
Don't give up if you believe in it.
BOOK REVIEW
Counting Coup:A True Story of Basketball
and Honor on the Little Big Horn
by Larry Colton
(Warner Books, 420 Pages, $24.95)
Let's cut right to the final buzzer: Counting Coup
is a game-winning three-point shot from the top of the key,
the best book about basketball since John Feinstein's A
Season on the Brink. Larry Colton writes in a crisp,
effortless style that belies the fact that he wrestled with
this book for years before publication. And when readers
hear the story he has to tell, they'll understand why. Colton
recounts the against-all-odds senior year of Montana high-school
hoops star Sharon LaForge, a gifted Crow Indian girl who
blows off practices, skips breakfast on game days, smokes
pot, worships her cheating 25-year-old boyfriend--and lives
for basketball.
Colton is no impartial observer but one of the book's principal
characters: He cheers on Sharon's team, second-guesses her
coach (and there's plenty to second-guess here),
sweats with the tribal elders, loans Sharon's grandmother
money and at one point even contemplates rescuing Sharon
from the rez to play basketball for Portland State. The
action Colton describes on the court is heart-stopping;
the action off-court is heartbreaking. The Hardin High Lady
Bulldogs struggle from one hair-raising victory to another
in their self-destructive quest for a state championship
while Sharon's dysfunctional extended family disintegrates
around her.
The book's greatest moments come when these two worlds
collide, as when Sharon's estranged, hopelessly alcoholic
mother staggers onto the court just as her daughter steps
up to shoot crucial free throws in the final seconds of
a game against the state's biggest high school. There are
no Hollywood endings here: no state championship, no basketball
scholarship for Sharon. She spirals into despair, barely
graduating, getting pregnant by her boyfriend and taking
a menial job in the Custer Battlefield gift shop.
Colton walks away from the book, but finds his hope renewed
as Sharon earns a community-college degree and comes within
a term of graduating from a four-year school while juggling
two kids and nursing black eyes from her now-abusive husband.
The game of Sharon's life is still in the fourth quarter,
and Colton sees no hint of surrender.
--Matt Buckingham
JENNIFER LAUCK:
RECLAIMING AN IMPERFECT LIFE
She is perfect in every way, from her tousled auburn hair
to her flared, black corduroy jeans. "I'm one of those women
other women find irritating," Jennifer Lauck says over shoulder
as she prepares a snack in her spotless kitchen. "I bake
my own muffins."
She describes the recipe she has worked all summer to perfect:
whole-wheat flour sweetened with maple syrup and applesauce,
and huckleberries (hand-picked in the Idaho mountains, of
course) stirred in. "I've been searching for the perfect
muffin that doesn't have any dairy or sugar in it," she
says earnestly, sounding like Martha Stewart with a more
lilting voice.
Scanning her immaculate Hollywood District 1920s-era house--where
even the toddler's toys are straightened--one can't help
wondering: Who is this person and why did she leave Stepford?
It's a question that, with slight variations, is being
asked around town. How can someone unknown in literary circles
suddenly end up with a blurb in Newsweek and a date
on The Rosie O'Donnell Show? More vexing, how can
someone who has never even penned a magazine article snag
the same agent as Frank McCourt, of Angela's Ashes
fame?
It's not as though Lauck is a literary outcast. Larry Colton,
for one, is impressed. The pair became friends after she
struck up a conversation with him at a Coffee People a few
years ago while posing as a literary agent ("I was thinking
about becoming one at the time," she explains).
But other writers have been less eager to jump on the Jennifer
praise-train. Maybe it's resentment. Lauck, after all, has
it all: the best agent, a fabulous book deal, a cute author
photo, a date on a nationally syndicated talk show and an
awesome fat-free muffin recipe.
Lauck has spent the past decade carefully constructing
a perfect life and writing career in Portland. After a stint
producing news at KATU, she quit the news biz five years
ago to dabble in public relations, representing fitness
guru Victoria Johnson and others. Then she embarked upon
a quest to understand her tumultuous childhood as an orphan.
With the support of her husband, she conjured up and wrote
down her memories while restoring her house and having a
child. Then, with astonishing persistence, she met the challenge
of selling the first volume of her memoir trilogy.
Is she for real? Is her book for real? In the perfectly
landscaped backyard of her spotless home, Lauck reveals
how she arrived at the brink of literary stardom.
Willamette Week: You were in Tom Spanbauer's Dangerous
Writers group. What was that like?
Jennifer Lauck: I couldn't have gone to better therapy.
Tom brings you to the point of greatest suffering and says,
break that open. When I was done with it, I really felt
I had a solid piece. I wasn't going to sit and minutiae
over this for five years; I wanted to publish this book.
I said to the group, "I'm done, this is January and I'm
going to go sell this book now." You can't be in a creative
space and a marketing space. You have to be in one or another;
it's just too weird.
Did having PR experience help you sell your book?
It's instrumental. It seems like everything in my life
has led to helping me with this. Yeah, I know how to fly
to New York, I know how to put on a suit and stand in front
of people and say, "This is what I think is good about this,
this is what's in the market currently, this is why mine's
better."
How did you actually sell your book?
I followed the traditional route of packaging it and sending
it. That was getting me nowhere fast. I was actually rejected
by Molly Friedrich, the agent I currently have. She was
my ideal because Frank McCourt had two books and I had three.
That set me back right away. I was rejected by about 25
different agents. And then I said, "Screw this." I picked
up the phone and started calling people I knew in New York.
The woman I knew at Pocket Books was no longer there, but
the young woman, Kim, who answered the phone was an assistant
to Nancy Miller, who acquired J.D. Salinger's daughter's
memoir. Kim was young and interested in acquiring books
and building a career. I started talking; she thought I
was an agent. An hour-and-a-half later, she found out I
was the writer, could not believe it, and read it in three
days. It was literally that fast.
What's your book tour going to be like?
It's going to be really hard for me because I finally have
two people in my life that I just adore, and to leave them
is the hardest thing I will have to do. At the same time,
that's part of the process. You can't just write a great
book anymore, you have to look a certain way. It's sad that
the industry has come to this. I hope there's a backlash
one day, because it's not fair and it's not right. And I
don't think that the reason this is going to be successful
is based on how I look. But it's going to be more successful
more quickly because it's a complete package that's easy
to market.
Will this book change how people view you?
What has often provoked a lot of resentment in people who've
known me before I wrote this--Oh, Jennifer, she has it all
together--now, they know me in a different way and they
realize this has been hard-won. I'm not somebody they can
pick apart or find fault in, I'm someone who can be an inspiration
to them. That's refreshing, because it's exhausting going,
"No, no, I'm not that much different from you, I'm not that
much better." I'm hoping this higher source inspires me
and I say what needs to be said in the right tone that is
heard. Let's not waste this gift. Then I hope to have a
normal life.
How are you going to handle people at your signings who
want something from you?
When people come to me in a tremendous amount of pain,
I used to be panicked about them taking from me. But now
I know you cannot heal someone who's not ready to be healed,
but you can inspire someone who's on the brink of being
inspired. I have to say I find a tremendous amount of comfort
from my faith. I'm finding more substance in Catholicism,
interestingly--not in all the patriarchy and strange rituals,
but in the idea that things are bigger than us. I have to
trust that I will be OK in this and I was given this load
because I can carry it. I can't control anything. That's
why my house is so neat and tidy; at least I can keep things
picked up and I can make some good muffins.
BOOK REVIEW
Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found
by Jennifer Lauck
(Pocket Books, 406 pages, $23.95)
Blackbird is like a baffling nightmare that goes
on too long and remains a mystery after you
wake up.
Jennifer Lauck writes the story of six years of her childhood--ages
4 to 10--from the point of view of the child she was. It's
an interesting writing exercise, but it cannot carry a memoir.
Rather than sympathy for Lauck, the book evokes frustration.
The evils done to Lauck are mind-boggling, but she subjects
us to them without helping us understand how they have formed
the adult she has become.
The book, then, evolves into an unrelenting bombardment
of pain: Her mother's terminal illness; Lauck's discovery
that she's adopted; her mother's death; her father's abandonment
and subsequent remarriage to a shrill and controlling religious
freak; her father's death and the stepmother's decision
to dump 10-year-old Jennifer into a sort of communal home.
Amid the blow-by-blow, there are key questions that are
never answered. Why did a seemingly loving father disappear
emotionally? Why did the evil stepmother send her away?
They are questions that a child can't answer but an adult
reader can't ignore.
The book suffers from several other flaws: It ends with
Lauck's reunion with a character the reader has never met,
leaving us unable to share the relief she apparently wants
us to feel. Other key figures, especially her father, are
portrayed inconsistently. Certain events seem implausible.
But the real problem with the book is that it's an emotional
ripoff. The subtitle, "A Childhood Lost and Found," is misleading.
Lauck may have found the meaning of her childhood, but she's
keeping it to herself--or, perhaps, saving it for part three
of this trilogy. Reliving childhood trauma for its own sake
is fun only for drama junkies and permanent victims. The
real getting-over comes with perspective and understanding.
Lauck has denied us that.
--Patty Wentz
ROBERT SULLIVAN:
A WHALE OF A TALE
Robert Sullivan is one of those fast-talking New Yorkers
who seem slick as snot. In a single conversation, he can
explain, joke, plead, wheedle, cajole, beg, lament and lecture.
And when he's finally done talking, he's your new best friend.
He has an uncanny knack for tuning into other people. You
will gladly tell him your deepest secret just because he
seems to crave knowledge so badly. He gives the impression
that he's impossibly interested to know what it's like to
vacation in Minnesota, and you end up telling him about
your brother getting drunk on Hamm's and vomiting off the
end of the dock.
But maybe his curiosity isn't an illusion. Whether he's
writing a Vogue article about a former NYPD Blue
star's fashion challenges in her new career, or researching
Meadowlands, his critically acclaimed book about
a famous New Jersey swamp, Sullivan is relentless in his
quest to be a know-it-all.
Ten years ago, he moved his family from New York City to
Portland, where his wife grew up, and settled into life
in the slow lane. He continued to work as freelance writer
out of a garret above the Greek Cusina restaurant downtown,
churning out articles for national publications such as
The New York Times Magazine and working as a contributing
editor for Vogue. In 1998, Sullivan drove up to the
very corner of the Pacific Northwest to cover an odd story
for the Times magazine: A group of Indians was going
to hunt a whale. Little did he know that the story would
consume his life for nearly two years.
Sullivan ended up Ahabing his way up to Neah Bay countless
times, sleeping in a shack when his money got scarce and
even tackling the greatest battle of them all: reading Moby-Dick.
But by befriending the Makah Nation, Sullivan was privy
to information that no other reporter could ever hope to
gain. And when the whale was dead, he had a mountain of
notes that seemed impossible to organize. After months of
agonizing and meditating on Melville, he wrote A Whale
Hunt: Two Years on the Olympic Peninsula with the Makah
and Their Canoe.
Sullivan packed up his own canoe and left Portland this
summer, moving the family back to Brooklyn after Vogue
made him an offer he couldn't refuse. He talked by phone
from his new apartment while waiting for a courier to deliver
the first copies of A Whale Hunt, and he was nervous.
"I'm worried about what the protesters are going to think,"
he said, "I'm worried about what the tribe is going to think.
I'm worried about what my friends are going to think. But,
as you can probably tell, I'm naturally worried all the
time about everything." As acid ate away at his stomach
lining, Sullivan talked about how he got swallowed alive
by a whale of a story.
Willamette Week: Why did you become so stuck on
the whale hunt story?
Robert Sullivan: After I did this quick piece for the magazine,
I was like, oh my God, I can't even begin to explain this
in like, 1,000 pages. I got caught up in it and continued
to stick around and use money that I didn't have. I remember
when it was happening, I was like, "I should just quit this."
Especially when the hunt seemed imminent for that long month
or two in the fall. I'd be at the pay phone, talking to
my wife, "What should I do? I can't take it any more. I'm
sleeping in the damp. Every morning, I think it's going
to happen. I try to leave and I can't. By 10 o'clock, I'm
so dispirited." But then my wife would say, "You can't leave
now, you might miss it." It was that simple fact and that
huge note of encouragement that kept me going.
It seems like you were willing to go wherever the story
took you. Where did you draw
the line?
Right before the hunt happened, the Today Show crew
went up to the tribal chairman and said, "Is there any way
we can get us and a camera into the canoe?" The tribal chairman
respectfully, but also a bit jokingly, said, "Sorry guys,
no." After most of the news guys left, I went up to the
tribal chairman and said, "Have I made it absolutely clear
that I am the one reporter who does not want to be near
or in the canoe during the actual whale hunt on account
of the guns and harpoons?"
Did spending so much time with a tribe change how you perceived
Indians?
My wife is from Portland and she grew up learning about
coastal tribes. But I didn't really know about Northwest
Indian culture. The idea of Native Americans saying, "We're
going to go out and kill a whale"--that was a shock to me,
because I didn't even know they hunted whales. That shows
you exactly how ignorant I am. What was interesting is that
there's this notion that a white guy goes to live with the
tribe and goes into a sweat lodge and comes out an Indian.
That, to me, is really bizarre.
So none of their spirituality rubbed off on you at all?
The place reminded me of Ireland like I can't even tell
you, and I've never even been to Ireland, so that's scary
in itself. But I think of western Ireland as the farthest-away
and the most mystical and beautiful and still-in-touch-with-nature
place. Did it rub off on me? No. But did I go there and
see people who I thought were caring people who worried
about their town and their family? Yeah, I did. And they
gave me great smoked salmon, the best I've ever had.
Did you feel like this book was meant to be?
In the end I did, after I figured out a way to write it.
When I started it, it was so hard, it was much harder than
Meadowlands. I kept thinking, "What am I going to
write about this?" I'm not an Indian. I'm not a protester.
I'm just a guy who was there. There was so much that is
not comprehendible. How will I be able to fit these little
things that I saw that meant a lot to me into the scheme
of this front-page-of-The New York Times photo? I
totally did not want to do it. But I couldn't not turn it
in; I needed the money. I'm a freelance writer; I don't
have some organization sponsoring me. I write stories to
make money. Instead of making giant whatevers, I hand in
pieces of paper with typing on it.
Was there a singular breakthrough point?
I'm looking at the sky at one o'clock in the morning riding
over the Broadway Bridge coming back from my office, thinking,
"How am I going to finish this? What am I going to do?"
Fortunately, there was a comet at that time. This seemed
significant--keep going, it said to me.
BOOK REVIEW
A Whale Hunt
by Robert Sullivan
(Scribner, 285 pages, $25)
Robert Sullivan spent nearly two years hanging around in
Neah Bay, home of the Makah tribe. He'd read a news account
of the tribe's plans to re-create a traditional whale hunt;
the idea seduced him, and, armed with a copy of Moby-Dick,
he drove up north for what he thought would be a short visit
to write a magazine article.
As with Melville's account, things did not go according
to plan. The whale hunt drew protesters; the protesters
drew media. Sullivan ended up sticking around to see how
it all turned out.
Lucky us. Instead of flimsy news accounts or shallow, hysterical
TV reports, we get a cast of characters so well-drawn that
even the people with only minor roles in the story could
walk right off the pages of this book and shake your hand.
Sullivan must've become best friends with everyone in town.
A less skillful writer, or one with a less generous heart,
could have written a scornful portrait of three absurd factions--the
Makah whale hunters, the environmentalist protesters and
the drooling media. It wouldn't be a stretch to see the
hunt as a fiasco and the participants as bumbling idiots.
But Sullivan writes with clear affection for the people
involved, even when they behave ridiculously. He makes neither
apologies nor judgments.
Sullivan records events in an unembellished, almost deadpan
style, often funny but never over-the-top. In his hands,
what could've been a sappy "save-the-whales" heart-squeezer
or a diatribe against hypocritical environmentalists becomes
something much rarer--an honest and sincere portrayal of
a fight nobody can win. --Becky Ohlsen
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