410 Western American Literature his sister. But there seems to be room to develop these and other characters further. Is there a sequel in the works? PAUL HADELLA Southern Oregon State College How I Came West and Why I Stayed: Stories. By Alison Baker. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993. 182 pages, $9.95.) Loving Wanda Beaver: Novella and Stories. By Alison Baker. (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995. 213 pages, $16.95.) Knowing I was to review Alison Baker’s short stories for this journal made my reading of them feel slightly like a snipe hunt— where were the western themes, the western settings? In How I Came West and Why I Stayed, the most clearly western is the title story, set in a remote area of Montana where cheerleaders are as sought after as grizzlies and mountain lions. A young woman comes to town to join the search. Through the winter, her mentor, Buffalo Gal, teaches her how to ski and track cheerleaders. Their efforts are finally rewarded when the aging but still energetic cheerleaders miraculously appear one night at the Silver Dollar Saloon. Searching for cheerleaders unites the female characters. What makes the cheer leaders so compelling, they realize, is their “team spirit,” which the narrator tells us is “something hard to find in the West . . . in the wide-open spaces, where women spend most of their time alone.” That insight, the western setting, and a scene in which the greenhorn narrator confronts an old-timer tough gal in a parody of the High Noon showdown are characteristics that give this story a western feel, in spite of its lack of the customary reverence for the western landscape. The narrator, for example, merely notes that the night sky is “cluttered with stars,” but she prefers the camaraderie inside a bar to star gazing. In another story with a western setting, “My Life in the Frozen North, ” arctic explorers devoted their lives to recording data but failed to give it to anyone or explain to their daughter what it meant. Thus when they die, she wanders alone and uncivilized, barely eking out a cold and meaningless existence—a warning perhaps about the Reviews 411 dangers of “pure” science and/or of frontier life without the civiliz ing influence of human companionship. Whether Baker’s stories are about the West or another locale, they have an element of the unexpected, weird juxtapositions of characters and situation, and a touch of fantasy. Characters often are young urban professionals coping with uniquely contemporary issues such as the young man in “Better Be Ready ‘Bout Half Past Eight,” who comes to terms with his best friend’s decision to have a sex change operation. In Loving Wanda Beaver: Novella and Stories, the West was scarce until the final selection, a novella, “Almost Home,” in which Decker and his dog flee from city life to the rural Pacific Northwest. They learn that the simple life has its price. Decker’s dog is inex plicably lost, his home is nearly consumed by forest fire, and the locals don’t trust him, especially after he goes to work for the Forest Service. His involvement in a scheme to help a runaway bear, and his friendship with a Vietnam veteran named Bear, provide connec tion and comic relief in his life. Bear sums up their experiences when he is inspired by a starry night sky to compose these lines, “Out of the wrack and ruin of our dreams of the frontier, a terrible beauty is born”—which sums up the story’s theme pretty well. The majority of the stories in this collection, as in Baker’s first, have decidedly nonwestern settings. Plots unfold inside apartments, hospitals, and laboratories. Protagonists face more than their share of off-beat and sometimes tragic situations. Wanda Beaver of the title story finds love on her summer job as a corn detassler. A lesbian couple faces their daughter’s defection to traditional housewifery and one partner’s cancer. Decker’s son is killed by a gunman who mows down innocent bystanders in a McDonald’s. If you are look ing for western qualities, as I was, perhaps Baker’s characters can be...
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Jan 1, 2011
Kim Kyung Hee + 1
Open Access