David James Duncan

"This touching, uplifting novel spans decades of loyalty, anger, regret, and love in the lives of the Chance family. Here there is a father whose dreams of glory on a baseball field are shattered by a mill accident, a mother who clings obsessively to a religion as a ward against the darkest hour of her past; and four brothers who come of age during the seismic upheavals of the sixties and who each choose their own way to deal with what the world has...

At the heart of Duncan's tales are characters undergoing the complex and violent process of transformation, with results both painful and wondrous. Equally affecting are his nonfiction reminiscences, the "river teeth" of the title. He likens his memories to the remains of old-growth trees that fall into Northwestern rivers and are sculpted by time and water. These experiences - shaped by his own river of time - are related with the art and grace of...

During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the whole messy truth about the legacy of last century's big dam building binge has come to light. What started out as an arguably good government project has drifted oceans away from that original virtuous intent. Governments plugged the nation's rivers in a misguided attempt to turn them into revenue streams. Water control projects' main legacy will be one of needless ecological destruction,...