Linda Crew is the award-winning author of nine novels and now, two memoirs--one, a harrowing accoung of the perils of physician-prescribed drugs, and the latest focusing on her childhood, her marriage, and the wedding of her son, which necessitated a life-altering trip to one of the most beautiful and exotic corners of China. Her readers range in age from children who enjoy the Nekomah Creek books to adults who have appreciated her recent cross-over titles such as Brides of Eden: A True Story Imagined, and A Heart for Any Fate: Westward to Oregon 1845. She and her husband live in her hometown of Corvallis, Oregon, at Wake Robin Farm, where they were married under the oak trees forty-nine years ago. When not writing, she enjoys working on their forest properties.
"Crew's prose flows smoothly across the page, inflected with wonderful details about the forests that form the backdrop of her characters' lives."
Kirkus Reviews
Corvallis, Oregon, 2009. The economy is still in the tank from the Great Recession, and the Garlands, owners of the largest family-owned forest tracts in the county, are reeling from a series of devastating personal losses. Nobody's having a harder time coping than Will Trask, the son-in-law who grew up in a logging family in the neighboring timber town of Eden Mills. Everyone loves the trees, but Will, now a forestry consultant and real estate agent, faces a unique struggle in straddling the two worlds—those who own the forests and those who cut them down. The loss of his wife, the cherished daughter of the Garland clan, has been a crushing blow, complicating his precarious family position.
Family Trees is a story of the ways in which people who are stuck find the means to break free and move on. It examines the value as well as the limits of family ties, celebrating, above all, the courage it takes to recognize the power of the present moment, the power of now.
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Once upon a time at Wake Robin Farm in Oregon, I was miraculously pregnant with our first child.
That same summer, on the Li River in Southern China, a pretty woman exactly my age was also expecting. She and her husband were both artists.
Our child, born in August, was a son. Theirs, born in October, a daughter.
Twenty-two years later these children, now grown, would meet in Beijing.
The girl from Yangshuo had been studying English.
Our son, traveling with a university program, was rapidly become proficient in both Mandarin and Cantonese.
These two could talk to each other. They could fall in love. And did.
This is their story.
And ours.
Everything in this book actually happened, even the lovely, fateful coincidences.
Especially those........
A HEART FOR ANY FATE: WESTWARD TO OREGON 1845
Winner of the Oregon Book Award
Winner of the Willa Literary Award, named for Willa Cather and given by Women Writing the West.
"Engagingly written, A Heart for Any Fate belongs with the best historical fiction on the American West."--William G. Robbins, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of History, Oregon State University.