Geo Beach and I have been close friends for nearly a half-century; his literary wisdom and counsel stand behind every line of poetry and prose I have written. No him, no me. This review meant the world to me when it appeared in the Anchorage Daily News in 2004, and still resonates deeply.
Independent journalist Geo Beach writes for Anchorage Daily News, National Public Radio, History TV, and TomPaine.com.
Sure, Alaska is in the Americas. But,
united with other states? That's a matter of opinion. And that's
one reason why Anthony Weller's The Siege of Salt Cove is the
summer's salient book. As well as the funniest and most poignant, a
Far Side farce come true.
When Anthony Weller and I met in high
school he was already a good writer. The son of George Weller, a
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter posted to overseas assignments,
Anthony consequently grew up largely in correspondence with his
father, a childhood mapped out on onionskin, Par Avion
tricolors to and fro across oceans.
That will sharpen your eye, and your
pen.
After college, Anthony himself began a
colorful career as a foreign correspondent, writing for The New
York Times Magazine, Esquire, Playboy, and National
Geographic. Then he started writing books – about the
Caribbean, where he spent summers; Eastern Europe, where he played
jazz; and the Indian subcontinent, where he traversed miles and
millennia toe-to-tip on the Grand Trunk Road.
Weller has returned to the United
States for the locale of his new novel, and just in time.
America seems like another country now,
in need of a well-traveled perspective to accurately report it. It’s
someplace else. Alaskans have long understood that – “Outside”
is anyplace that’s not Alaska, without distinction between the US
and other foreign countries. And Weller understands – he knows
Lower-48ers think their America is someplace else now too.
Salt Cove is a New England village with
a problem. The state has decreed the demolition of a 200-year-old
wooden bridge, intending to replace it with a concrete monstrosity.
The villagers attempt negotiation; the bureaucrats are intransigent.
So in brave desperation, Salt Cove secedes from the Commonwealth and
the Union.
When The Sals (Outsiders call them
Saltines) persist in their opposition to diktat, the
government brings in SWAT teams and the National Guard. Big guns are
deployed, lives lost, little won.
Sound familiar? The
US Navy shelled the villages of Kake and Wrangell in 1869 and
destroyed Angoon in 1882. And since statehood, many Alaskans have
felt in a perpetual state of siege to the alphanumerics of federal
government, from ANCSA’s d-2 lands to ANWR’s 1002 Area.
But Salt Cove doesn’t echo
just ancient history. These days, Girdwood talks about seceding from
the Municipality of Anchorage. In the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Homer
freethinkers ponder whether to secede and form their own Kachemak
Country Borough. And statewide, the Alaskan Independence Party was
built upon the rough-cut plank of secession from the US. Venitie
went to the Supreme Court declaring itself Indian Country, a
sovereign nation.
The memory of secession in The States
is wrapped in the racism of the war between them. But there was that
earlier, brighter history – The Declaration of Secession that will
be celebrated again on the Fourth of July.
And The Siege of Salt Cove
celebrates independence with a marvelous teapartytime sensibility –
half Boston Patriots, half Mad Hatters. Weller unleashes a chorus of
39 narrative voices, so Salt Cove shouts and whispers like a
small town meeting. As in life, you have to determine where truth
lies.
Weller knows, “from Alaska to Long
Island’s South Fork to Cherokee Nation, an island in the Rio
Grande, and multiple Indian protests on Martha’s Vineyard, in
Vermont, in Maine… Everyone wants his own country.”
Since the passage of the Patriot Act,
lots of Americans have decided they just want their own country back.
More than 250 towns, including Anchorage, have passed resolutions
against the Pat Act, with its erosion of representative government
and civil liberties. And so have four states – Yankee Maine and
Vermont, plus Hawaii and Alaska.
Despite
being bullied, regular folks in small towns are standing up to
intrusive big government – and Weller is master here. His dark
satire conveys a moving humanity – lives, loves, loss, laughter –
exposing truths about domestic enemies as his father did about
foreign threats. Today, though, the real story isn't on the front
page, it's between the hardcovers of well-wrought fiction.
Whether you’re reading on the back
deck of a boat or in the backyard deck chair, The Siege of Salt
Cove is a manual for modern Alaskans – Americans who have
always been more than summer soldiers and sunshine patriots.
Independent journalist Geo Beach
can be reached at gbeach@adnmail.com.
