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Show The Park Record Wed/Thurs/Fri, July 3-5, 2013 Book reviews Sippings of memory: a review of ‘100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do' by Charles Finn High Country News One of the happy consequences of reading Kim Stafford is that he makes you want to become a better person. The Portland-based author of 12 books of poetry and prose writes with a quiet gentleness, intimacy and kindness. "100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared" is a personal and introspective memoir chronicling Stafford's relationship with his older brother, Bret, who took his own life at the age of 40, with very little warning. In 82 chapters, some only a few paragraphs in length - "sippings," as Stafford has called them elsewhere - the writer searches his "tunnel of memory" for clues to the painful mystery that still haunts him. "For the work of memoir," Stafford writes, "is to put personal memory in a form that may serve the memories of others." For Stafford, most memories are consoling, and "100 Tricks" shows us a man - who just happens to be a gifted writer - looking back, struggling to make sense of tragedy. "I have written in this book what the philosopher José Ortega y Gassett called ‘salvations' - short narratives that seek to apprehend and save essential stories and discoveries: a moment, a fleeting glimpse, any episodic evidence toward understanding." Stafford's economic and deft use of language is one of the book's strengths. This comes as no surprise: Like his famous father, former U.S. Poet Laureate William Stafford, Kim Stafford is first and foremost a poet. "My soul has pockets," the younger Stafford writes, "and into these pockets gather the places and moments that mutter my brother's life." Stafford also has a history of offering wisdom with Zen-like simplicity and "100 Tricks" does not disappoint: "Happiness is born in struggle and even in failure," and "Each story will seek the right listener." Ultimately, many of Stafford's questions remain unanswerable. Though "100 Tricks" centers on his brother's suicide, it is neither glum nor depressing. Instead, it's a heartwarming and touching investigation into family and memory -- a book about love and living well above all else. "100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared" Kim Stafford 202 pages, softcover: $16.95. Trinity University Press, 2012. Listening to the secret heart: a review of ‘The Last Shepherd' by Phyllis Barber High Country News Arizona author Martin Etchart's compelling second novel takes readers to the heart of a Basque family, originally from the French Pyrenees, that has been whittled down to two: a father and a son. Mathieu Etcheberri, the son of Basque shepherds who built a hardscrabble life in the mountains above Phoenix, Ariz., wants nothing to do with the family ranch or its "boring sheep." He'd rather attend a university and find a new future. But when his father dies in a truck accident, caused by a monsoon storm that "tightened into a fist that crushed my world," he finds himself alone, facing a perplexing situation. It turns out that the ranch is not his to sell; it belongs to an aunt in Urebel, France, a woman he has never met who has always returned, unopened, any letters sent to her. Declining an offer by a crooked attorney who wants the land for development, Mathieu stumbles along in his good-hearted "Basqoh" way, choosing to trust the still, small voices of his dead father and aitatxi (grandfather). And so he finds himself back in one of the seven traditional provinces of Spain's Basque country, face-to-face with bihotz isilekoa A-13 - the deep secrets of the heart. Confronted by the mystery of past family quarrels - "even though I'd discovered a family I hadn't known existed," he notes, "half of them wouldn't acknowledge me" - he gradually unravels the knotted strings his progenitors left to entangle their descendants. Through a twisting chain of events, narrated with a broad sprinkling of Euskara (the Basque language, which lacks common roots with any other language), Mathieu begins to understand the deep community bonds among his people. Their culture may be unfamiliar to most readers, but the haunting resonance of ancestral ties echoes in families throughout the world, from time immemorial. Etchart's musical writing draws its strength from the rhythms of his native sensibility. The behotza, the heart, knows the answers. Mathieu learns to listen to it, and in the process, discovers how to set about righting some age-old wrongs. "The Last Shepherd" Martin Etchart 203 pages, softcover: $22. Univ. of Nevada Press, 2012. 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