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Ooligan Feature: A Heart for Any Fate

The Oregon Trail was traveled by the full range of wild-west personalities. Cowboys and Indians found themselves taking the same journey as gold prospectors and fur traders. Such travels and travails, meetings and mergers, have frequently been featured in books, film, and other media. A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon, 1845, offers insight into a less common viewpoint. Author Linda Crew writes from the point of view of 17-year-old Lovisa King (“Lovisa doesn’t rhyme with anything,” as Crew notes early in the book, “but try to think horizon when you say it”), who leaves Missouri with three generations of her family in five covered wagons. The book’s gripping epigraph sets up the story:

Historical records tell us the route they chose.
We know who lived to see the so-called Promised Land,
who did not, and which sweethearts married at trail’s end.

Beyond that we must do a good deal of imagining.

But perhaps the journey went something like this…

This opening sets up the “what will happen next” narrative that modern audiences tend to associate more with a television show than a novel. The most enjoyable part of reading the book is seeing the interactions between the family members and witnessing how the emotional bonds between them are strengthened and, in some cases, severely tried by the epic journey. Going into the book knowing that some of these characters aren’t going to make it adds to the power of the experience. The trail itself becomes a character in the novel; sometimes kind, other times unimaginably cruel, and always mysterious. Lovisa is never sure to what fate the road is going to lead her on any given day. The reader experiences Lovisa’s anxiety and excitement that she is a part of something incredible.

By trail’s end, the reader will have fallen in love with this young, impetuous, and highly observant narrator. The epilogue, written by one of Lovisa’s distant descendants, serves to remind us that she was a real person, that her trials and difficulties were real, and that her triumphs have ultimately been remembered. On the Oregon Trail, there could be no better ending.

Leni Zumas, The Listeners, and Powell’s Indiespensables

Leni Zumas is the author of the short story collection Farewell Navigator and a forthcoming novel from Tin House, The Listeners. The Listeners is Powell’s latest Indiespensable title, and Zumas will be reading at Powell’s this Wednesday, May 16, to celebrate its launch.

I’m looking forward to reading The Listeners, which is about failing musician Quinn, who is still affected by her childhood and the death of her sister. I loved Zumas’ short story collection, Farewell Navigator. It’s just so weird and wild and wonderful. In the ten stories, narrators switch from gay teens, to a young girl on a pirate ship, to a gargoyle—even though all the stories are in first person, they are all indelible. Zumas is one of the few authors I’ve read in a long time who has a really individual voice.

She recently started teaching at Portland State University, and while she was interviewing here, one of the things she talked about was defamiliarization in fiction—how writers can, through their language, make the everyday unfamiliar again. This idea is definitely present in Zumas’ work; what she writes about could be mundane in other hands, but her stories always feel magical and off-kilter. Leni Brooklyn

The other thing that’s exciting is that The Listeners is Powell’s latest Indiespensable title. Indiespensable is Powell’s subscription book club; it comes out every six weeks and costs $39.95 per installment. For that price, Powell’s includes a main title, which is often signed or designed in a special way; an additional book (usually); and some extra treats. For The Listeners, Powell’s is including:

“A custom hardcover edition of The Listeners produced exclusively for Indiespensable and signed by the author
The Powells.com interview and Indiespensable Q&A with Leni Zumas
A signed letter-pressed broadside featuring a short story from a debut author
And other special surprises!”

All of that sounds pretty cool. You can read about what went into making past installments on the Powell’s website, although be wary—you can’t buy previous installments, so reading about them can be a futile endeavor.

There are a few that I wish I could go back and buy, including Volume 29: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, which included a custom slipcase for the book as well as popcorn and Heidi Julavits’ novel The Vanishers; Volume 23: The Instructions by Adam Levine, which came with a specially-designed cover, a Powell’s tote bag, and marshmallows; and Volume 16, Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich, which came with a Lionel Shriver novel, cookies, and a journal.

It’s not too late to buy an Indiespensable subscription and get the current package that includes Zumas’ The Listeners. That’s good news, at least.

She really is amazing, and I recommend that you all buy The Listeners at Powell’s or Tin House, and go see her this Wednesday, May 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Powell’s City of Books on West Burnside!