Mary Clearman Blew

Mary Clearman Blew pulls no punches in telling the story of the Hogeland and the Welch families and the tellingly tough times they faced in frontier Montana from the turn of the twentieth century onward. Drought, the Depression, inexperience, madness, bitterly cold winters and dust storms all conspire against these families, and yet they somehow managed to persevere, if not to prosper, at least to survive. Blew's finely wrought essays weave a tapestry that brings these people to life, from show more 1900 right up to the present day. Her own difficult marriages and fierce, almost ruthless, determination to succeed are not spared in the telling. This is one helluva good read, one which I will recommend highly. I have nothing but admiration for Mary Clearman Blew, both as a writer and as a woman. show less

Mary Blew wants people to know about her life. She wants people to know the wilds of Montana as her ancestors found it, cultivated it, endured it, barely survived it. However, Balsamroot is more than about Blew's life and the personal landscape of her people. Balsamroot is about family ties, historically and present day. The ties that keep generations together and what tears them apart. When Blew first introduces her daughter, Elizabeth, I am sad for them. Mary makes it clear she has lost show more touch with her eldest daughter - hasn't seen her in years. She doesn't hide the fact Elizabeth is a complete stranger to her; asking "Am I really her mother?" (p 19). The stories within Balsamroot bounce around a lot. Early homesteading stories and mingled with a present day pregnancy and musings about Blew's own attempts at motherhood. It is a running commentary on growing old from the perspective of the baffled, frustrated caregiver. Dementia robs an entire family of more than just the mind and its memories. The past and present are entwined into one beautiful story. show less

BAALSAMROOT is a memoir wrapped around a melancholy tribute to a favorite maiden aunt of the author. "Auntie" Imogene was a schoolteacher whom Blew had always remembered as being independent and happy. When Blew is forced to become her aunt's caretaker in her final years, she discovers Auntie's diaries, and, reading them, learns the true cost of her aunt's independence and the hollowness if not falsity of her supposed happiness. Blew herself has gone through some tough times, a single mother show more who was long estranged from her own daughter, she became a mother again 21 years after the birth of her first daughter, Elizabeth. Some of her story was told in her other Montana memoir, ALL BUT THE WALTZ. This book exposes the loneliness of her Aunt's solitary life, causing Blew to perhaps question her own choices as she grows older herself, and watches Imogene lapse rather rapidly into dementia and utter helplessness and dependence. Blew makes no bones or excuses about her own life choices, admitting what might be seen by some as selfishness in her relentless pursuit of a successful career in writing and teaching. This is not always an easy story to read, but it is an extremely well-written one. Blew's unfailing attention to her craft - which is ably demonstrated here - excuses a multitude of personal failings, at least for this reader. Mary Clearman Blew knows who she is. She is a writer. Like her first memoir, BALSAMROOT is an admirable piece of work. I liked it. show less

A wonderful title, but it's wasted on this uneven memoir that devotes too little word space to the fascinating, rarely explored subject of small, state-supported colleges to which the title seemingly refers. Blew, who was a professor and administrator at one such institution on the remote high plains of northern Montana for eighteen years, is a good writer, but her memoir makes jumpy transitions in time and subject matter, is sometimes mean-spirited, and leaves a lot unexplained.