Broken Open by Martha Gies
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Martha Gies writes a spellbinding tale of experiences in her itinerant life plus stories of the equally fascinating souls she met along the way. Whether assisting Great Kramien the Magician in his act, studying with Raymond Carver, interviewing graveyard shift workers when driving cab (see her first book Up All Night), or talking to an ex-Black Panther father or a nuclear physicist, she speaks wisely and compassionately interviews her subjects with a bit of humor for herself. It is very much a Northwest book describing growing up on an asparagus farm worked by hundreds of braceros when the U. S. welcomed and documented foreign workers and the author's myriad jobs in different parts of Oregon and Washington and farther afield. The writing is polished, as one might expect from a writing teacher, but also hones exquisite recollections: "the thousands of stars above the Andes suggesting a white blaze just behind the perforated sky; the afternoon I bent among dense ferns to ladle clear, bubbling spring water into my pail and discovered the pink pearlescent shock of a large abalone shell left by a recent guest." She includes a passionate telling of her own spiritual journey preaching to county jail inmates, and her eventual conversion to Catholicism, work with the homeless and visits to pastoral ministries in Latin America. No humdrum moments in Gies' life tales--I highly recommend this collection.
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