Hit the Road in Travels with Charlize

Travels with Charlize

By David R. Gross

You’ll enjoy traveling with Charlize around the western United States.  Charlize is a lovely German shepherd rescue dog who’s all personality from the tip of her tail to the tip of her wet nose.  The author adopts Charlize after he’s lost the love of his life to cancer, his wife of almost 53 years Rosalie.

The author hit the road on a journey to find what there is left in life for him, seeking what to do with the rest of his years.  He was in search of living alone, supported by man’s best friend at his side.  It’s been said that “the world would be a nicer place if everyone had the ability to love as unconditionally as a dog.”  Charlize is an enthusiastic friend, an excellent listener, great at fetch, and has an innate sense to comfort when it’s needed most.  A reader is reminded of John Steinbeck’s book Travels With Charley.  As John Steinbeck said, “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”  Travels with Charlize is good medicine for a sad soul.

This book is a compilation of David Gross’ blogs, which makes it such a personal way to unfold his story.  The man and his dog began on their first of several journeys, from Washington State to California at the beginning of the book.  They’re off to visit family and friends towing a camping trailer nicknamed “Frog,” pulled by “Old Blue” a Dodge Ram truck.  That’s certainly a new life for a Veterinarian who also taught and did research in cardiovascular physiology for more than thirty years.

The author’s descriptive passages are entrancing and especially poignant when they include his nostalgic memories.  He compares today’s destinations with his memories of those places during boyhood and as a young man.  As a reader you’ll be surprised when the author reveals what big, visible changes time has brought.  Although their journeys are quite different, there are interesting parallels with John Steinbeck’s book, including each author’s insights into the America they see.  At one point John Steinbeck said, “I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”

 Like Steinbeck, our author also finds much beauty to marvel at along the way, and wonderful people.  Charlize turns out to be a natural friend maker and a magnet for attention.  Charlize is also a bit of a daredevil, at one point curiosity leading her onto the verge of unstable cliffs for a better look.  The book is dotted throughout with wonderful pictures of Charlize and of trip highlights.

None of us know what life holds around the corner.  When you have no map, and your GPS isn’t working, you’re fortunate in life if you have a loving, compassionate companion by your side.  This heartwarming tale shows one man’s search to find his way, with his tail wagging friend.

Thereby hangs a tail and a tale . . . .

The Whistling Season Tribute

The Whistling Season

By Ivan Doig

The first book I ever read by Ivan Doig was The Whistling Season.  This Big Sky author has left behind a lifetime’s work of compassionately written stories about the West and especially Montana for readers to continue to treasure.  A life well lived, and now the sorrow of his passing hits so many.

He’s an icon in the literature of the American West.  But, on his website Ivan Doig repudiated the regional inference: "I don't think of myself as a 'Western' writer. To me, language — the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose — is the ultimate 'region,' the true home, for a writer."  That poetry under prose is one of the unique aspects that frame his stories.  Rhythm, word choice, lyrical intent are the elements of his writing which comes across with a fresh, natural openness.

The Whistling Season is a charming tale of love and loss, truth and lies, and education—conventional and otherwise.  It is, like most of his books, set in rural Montana.  The narrator, Paul Milliron, is looking back almost 50 years, from the vista of 1957, back to when he was a boy.

From an interview with Ivan Doig on this novel he said, “My secret is out, sort of, kind of. Maybe more than any other character or, at least any other narrator who I have ever created, Paul has a few of my mental fingerprints. He loves language, even Latin—which I took in high school. He’s an inveterate reader of books. He eavesdrops with his eyes. He admits to a bit of a pedantic streak. He’s his own person, though.”

The Whistling Season presents Paul Milliron’s passion for isolated public schools that infuse vitality into their communities.  He narrates a loving portrait of this one-room schoolhouse.  In 1957 he’s a man at the end of a career as overseer of Montana schools.  In the era of Sputnik and modernization, he has been charged with announcing the mandated closing of the state's remaining one-room schoolhouses.

The novel’s main plot is straightforward and honest.  In 1909 Oliver Milliron, a recently widowed father of three boys, answers a newspaper ad from a widow in Minneapolis seeking employment: "Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite."   Oliver, a plain man with a love of language can't resist.  When Rose Llewellyn's train arrives, he discovers more than he bargained for; she’s brought her brother Morris.

Rose is feisty, willful and charming.  She takes over housekeeping duties, whistling all the while.  Morris, due to the sudden elopement of the one teacher, is appointed to the post.  Home life, and lessons in the classic one-room schoolhouse, continue but now changed by these spirited eccentrics.

Thereby hangs a tale . . . .