BRIDGE WORK

A NOVEL BY ANNETTE WHITE-PARKS

Set in the landscape of ocean and redwoods on California's north coast, Bridge Work portrays the watershed changes taking place in the 1970s, as the region struggles between a logging community on its way out, and a retirement-tourist bombardment on the horizon.  Before either, there were the homesteaders, and earlier yet native Indians, remnants of both rubbing elbows with retirees and tourists and the new breed called hippies, as the drink at the fictitious town of Luenga's two bars.  The cataclysmic changes wracking natural and human society parallel those facing Jesse, a mounting man/logger, and Nyx, a city schoolteacher waiting tables for the summer, both seeking escape.  The novel builds on their conflicts.  Can they get together despite radically different lifestyles and, if so, can it last?  Nelson Little, an Irish immigrant living with her cats in a glade by the river, supplies constancy and proves along with the ocean and the redwoods that though bridges may fall, they tend to rebuild, allowing us to pass over both ways.  Anyone who has suffered transitions in places they love can relate.

"While the word 'magical' doesn't appear in this novel, the basic raw beauty of the Mendocino coastal region draws the reader deep into a world where people appear and disappear, where spiritual presences of the native peoples and the redwoods cling to the present-becoming-the-past: a world now wracked with condominium mentality"  Pat MacAodha, Spirted Women, 2005

Annette White-Parks was born and grew up in Monument, Oregon where she started writing poems when she was big enough to pick wildflowers.  She has an MA in English from Sacramento State University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Washington State University.  The idea for Bridge Work came to her when she lived in Mendocino County, California, working as a waitress between teaching jobs.  Currently retired and a Professor Emeriti of English from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.  Dr. White-Parks lives with her husband Bernard Wilbur Parks in Portland, Oregon, dividing her timer between writing, activism and reviving Freshcut, a small press.  She has authored various pieces in journals and newspapers as well as the following books: 

  Tricksterism in Turn-of-the-Century Literature of the United States , 1995, co-ed Elizabeth Ammons; A gathering of Voices on the Asian American Esperience, co-ed Deborah Buffton, et al;  When Grownups Were Children, 1980

Available from Freshcut Press

 503-777-6727

Bridge Work

by Annette White-Parks

Freshcut Press, Inc.

305 pp. ISBN #096055503X,  $14.95

228 pp. Illus. Cloth, 

ISBN #252-02113-4

$24.95

University of Illinois Press, P.O. Box 4856, Hampden Post Office, Baltimore MD 21211

1-800-545-4703

This first full-length biography of the first published Asian North American fiction writer portrays a gifted, unsung woman and a world rarely seen in anything other than stereotypes.  The eldest daughter of a Chinese mother and British father, Edith Maude Eaton was born in England in 1865.  Later, as a writer in various cities in North America she used the name Sui Sin Far (Water Lily).  Today, Sui Sin Far is being rediscovered as part of our American history.

"Superbly researched, thoughtfully researched and beautifully written. . .will be the foundation for all future work on Sui Sin Far"  Elizabeth Ammons, author of Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century

University of Illinois Press, P.O. Box 4856, Hampden Post Office, Baltimore MD 21211

1-800-545-4703

This volume reprints stories from Mrs. Spring Fragrance, along with other previously uncollected stories and journalistic essays by the first published Asian North American fiction writer.

To order: 

Freshcut Press, 3610 SE 66th Ave., Portland OR 97206

Send a check or money order to Freshcut Press for $40 plus $6.50 shipping and handling

q awala li:'water coming down place': A History of Mendocino county, California, 1981 (to be reprinted 2005) by Annette White-Parks.  Artist Ann Kelly

A history of Gualala, bordering Mendocino and Sonoma Counties on the California Pacific west coast from the early 1800s to the mid 20th century.  160 pages illuminated with over 50 historical photographs, 8 original maps.

To order: 

Freshcut Press, 3610 SE 66th Ave., Portland OR 97206

Send a check or money order to Freshcut Press for

$14.00