Coming to Stay: A COLUMBIA RIVER JOURNEY

Coming to Stay A COLUMBIA RIVER JOURNEY Mary Dodds Schlick Oregon Historical Society, Portland, in association with the University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2006. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index, xiv + 192 pp. $22.50 paper.

Several years ago, Mary Dodds Schlick wrote Columbia River Basketry: Gift of the Ancestors, Gift of the Earth, an important book that still stands as one of the preeminent studies of the art form in this region. Her most recent book helps to explain how Schlick, the wife of a Bureau of Indian Affairs forester who eventually rose to super-intendent of the Yakama Indian Reservation, came to the study of basket weaving on the Columbia Plateau. Coming to Stay is Schlick's memoir of her adult life and especially of her years living on various Pacific Northwest Indian reservations.

Schlick and her husband came to the Pacific Northwest from Iowa in 1950, shortly after they married. For decades, they spent most of their time on several northwest reservations, relocating as Bud Schlick moved up the ranks. Much of the narrative is occupied with the careers of both Schlicks. Each move brought professional challenges for Bud, while Mary worked to integrate a growing family into their new community. Schlick was also occupied by the paid and volunteer work that is the social glue of rural and semirural communities-judging at county fairs, helping to found a kindergarten on the Warm Springs Reservation, and acting as the society editor for the Toppenisk (Wash.) Review. The Schlicks' work often provided them conduits into native life, which they embraced. This memoir honors the long and deep relationships they forged with the region's Indian people.

In many ways, Coming to Stay is a meditation on the importance of a place and its people to one woman and her family. The Columbia River Basin plays an essential role in this memoir. Early in the book, Schlick writes, "Through the years of our marriage, the mountain [Mount Adams] became a reassuring companion" (p. 9). The real action of the narrative and most of Schlick's personal and professional growth occurs within sight of the Columbia River or its mountains. Schlick describes periods spent in Washington, D.C, as "interludes" in an otherwise western life.

The strength of the book lies in its focus on place and community. Schlick and her husband exemplify outsiders who not only find their way into new places but enrich diem in the process. Like a true community builder, however, Schlick also leaves much unwritten-the factors that sometimes hindered her in forging the community ties that were obviously important to her, the strains between reservation people and surrounding residents, the often difficult interactions between the federal government and Indian nations, to name a few. Although she covers her introduction to Columbia Plateau basketry, Schlick does little to reflect on the implications of her growing interest, which is a disappointment. Nonetheless, for readers who share Schlick's love of the Columbia Valley and its first inhabitants, this book will prove a lively read.

Katrine Barber

Portland State University, Oregon

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