Embedded Files
by Dede Montgomery
by Dede Montgomery
As Dede Montgomery moves through grief to accept the death of her father, the stories in My Music Man shed light on change, acceptance, and forgiveness amid close personal relationships and Oregon’s natural landscapes.
The reader is catapulted into autumn on the Willamette’s riverbank in the 1960s with the author and her brothers, where they discover their father’s own childhood stories and the intimate relationship he shares with the land. Tales about generations of family weave between time periods, held together by the constancy of place and colored by memories of picking berries and filberts, traveling through the West Linn locks, and swimming in the river on a hot summer day. Montgomery describes small-town life in a school where everyone knows everybody, and how it felt to be an only girl in what often felt like a never-ending sea of boys.
"My Music Man is a story in the tradition of Carrie Young’s Nothing to Do but Stay, one of my all-time favorite books, a love song not to a river but to the prairie. We grow up much too fast. Before we know it, seemingly small decisions add up, shape our lives and become part of our past. All that’s left are the stories, and what wonderful stories they are!" — Birgitta Hjalmarson, author of Fylgia
"This book is a cross-stitch of family memories, historical anecdotes, and personal memoir, set in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. I loved hearing about early Oregon pioneers, their triumphs and trials, drives and disappointments. It's especially neat that these characters are mostly relations of the author and she has special source material in diaries and family lore!" — Margaret Pinard, Goodreads Review
Details
Details
Bink Books
186 pp. ● 5.5 x 8.5
$13.95 (pb) ● $8.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-945805-41-7 (pb)
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Pacific Northwest (OR, WA)
Publication date: October 2017
“History Connection: Bringing history to life” – Nancy Dunis, Lake Oswego Review
Generations get special consideration,” by Keli Stevens, Lake Oswego Review
“Interview With Dede Montgomery,” by Siobhan Taylor, Executive Director, Willamette Falls State Heritage Area
“WL’s Dede Montgomery pens memoir on family’s Oregon roots,” by Patrick Malee, West Linn Tidings
Dede Montgomery is the author of My Music Man, Beyond the Ripples, and Then, Now and In-Between: Place, Memories and Loss in Oregon. Dede is a 6th generation Oregonian and lives near Portland, Oregon.
"Dede Montgomery: memoir and short stories author." Authors of the Pacific Northwest Podcast
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