Catalog of British Columbiana and Pacific Northwest Americana

Short trips and trails the Columbia Gorge examines the intricate recreational network and scenic pathways woven through the dramatic, basalt-walled canyon that bisects the Cascade Range between Washington and Oregon. Bullard and Lowe detail how the region’s extreme vertical geography—specifically the sheer rock walls, the plunging waterfalls cascading through dense temperate rainforests, and the sharp climatic transition to arid interior plateaus—strictly dictates the margins of modern overland exploration. By mapping the precise routing of footpaths and historic highways along precarious cliff edges and deep riparian ravines, the narrative highlights how the sheer geological scale of the gorge anchors human movement to highly constrained, terrain-defined corridors. Ultimately, this recreational guide serves as a localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense geological forces and dramatic elevation gradients of this Pacific Northwest chokepoint fundamentally shape the immersive, terrain-dependent character of Columbia Gorge trail navigation.

128 pages illustrations 23 cm

Shoreline, or, Steamers, Stumps and Strawberries by LouAnn Bivins is a 1987 local history published by the Shoreline Historical Museum that chronicles the early development of this community situated just north of Seattle. The book explores the area's transformative pioneer eras, tracing its evolution from early Puget Sound steamer ports and rugged logging camps into a thriving agricultural landscape renowned for its strawberry farms. Ultimately, it serves as an engaging, well-documented tribute that preserves the unique rural heritage and foundational growth of the Shoreline area.

xi, 132 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Shoreline memories Volume 1 chronicles the grueling agricultural transformation and gradual civic expansion across the heavily forested glacial plateaus and steep coastal bluffs overlooking Puget Sound. The Shoreline Historical Society details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the towering, impenetrable stands of old-growth Douglas fir, the heavily compacted, unyielding glacial till soils, and the deep, rugged ravines that sharply bisected overland routes—strictly dictated the margins of early human survival, agrarian development, and eventual community integration. By mapping the immense physical labor required to painstakingly extract massive deep-rooted stumps from the damp earth, break the rocky soil for rudimentary farming, and cut precarious plank roads through the dense wilderness toward the burgeoning port of Seattle, the narrative highlights the monumental cooperative effort necessary to forcibly convert this rugged terrain into habitable homesteads and interconnected neighborhoods. The initial geographic isolation from the established urban core forced these remote pioneer enclaves into a strict reliance on the precise topography of the Puget Sound shoreline for early "mosquito fleet" maritime transportation, completely anchoring their physical survival and early commercial existence to the arduous overland transport and the severe maritime realities of the coastal bluffs. Ultimately, this civic and historical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the immense botanical density and challenging glacial topography of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, highly adaptable character of the early Shoreline community before its transition into a permanent suburban expanse.

2 volumes : illustrations ; 21 cm

Shoreline memories Volume 2 continues to chronicle the grueling infrastructural expansion and gradual suburban integration across the heavily forested glacial plateaus and steep coastal bluffs overlooking Puget Sound. The Shoreline Historical Society details how the region's formidable physical barriers—specifically the deeply incised ravines bisecting the coastal plain, the heavily compacted, unyielding glacial till, and the persistent, dense coastal brush—strictly dictated the margins of ongoing civic development and overland connectivity. By mapping the immense physical labor required to force permanent highway grades and interurban rail lines through the rugged topography, bridge the precipitous coastal gullies, and transform precarious pioneer tracts into structured commercial corridors, the narrative highlights the monumental cooperative effort necessary to forcibly bind this demanding environment to the expanding metropolis. The fading geographic isolation from the Seattle urban core shifted these remote enclaves into a strict reliance on the precise topography of the north-south transit corridors, completely anchoring their mid-century economic existence and civic identity to the relentless paving and grading of the glacial plateau. Ultimately, this civic and historical record serves as a deeply localized spatial history, demonstrating how the challenging glacial geography, heavy maritime precipitation, and immense physical labor of this Pacific Northwest frontier fundamentally shaped the fiercely resilient, highly adaptable character of the Shoreline community as it cemented its permanent suburban landscape.

2 volumes : illustrations ; 21 cm

For over 120 years, Whatcom County has been at the forefront of boatbuilding and ship construction. Its shipwrights, carpenters, and manufacturers have led the way in marine technology and innovation, never afraid of embracing the use of new building materials, methods--and at time, pioneering the industry itself

xv, 282 pages : illustrations ; 20 x 26 cm

Jim Gibbs's Shipwrecks off Juan de Fuca chronicles the perilous maritime history of the treacherous strait separating Washington's Olympic Peninsula from British Columbia's Vancouver Island. The narrative maps the notorious western approaches often dubbed the "Graveyard of the Pacific," detailing catastrophic maritime disasters along the unforgiving coastlines of Cape Flattery and the rugged shores of southwestern British Columbia. By documenting the severe navigational hazards posed by dense fog, violent Pacific storms, and hidden reefs, the book highlights the lethal geographical challenges intrinsic to this vital coastal environment. Through vivid accounts of lost vessels, the text ultimately captures the historical significance of the Strait as a dangerous but essential arterial route connecting the open ocean to the sheltered harbors of Puget Sound and the broader Salish Sea.

xiv, 240 pages illustrations, portraits 23 cm

Mariners have long dreaded the labyrinth of the San Juan Islands. Bounded by the howling straits of Georgia, Rosario, Haro, and Juan de Fuca, the islands have proved the resting place of many an unlucky ship. With the aid of period accounts and historical photographs, Shipwrecks of the San Juans brings to life harrowing tales such as the infamous Clallam tragedy, the Bahada mystery, and the unsolved disappearance of the yacht Prelude . . . along with many more.

Jim Gibbs’s Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast provides a comprehensive maritime chronicle of the catastrophic nautical disasters that defined early navigation along the unforgiving western seaboard of North America. The narrative meticulously maps the treacherous, storm-battered marine topography stretching from the jagged sea stacks of the Olympic Peninsula down to the rocky promontories of California, emphasizing the perilous reality of a shoreline notoriously devoid of safe, deep-water anchorages. By detailing the lethal combination of violent winter gales, dense coastal fogs, and submerged offshore reefs—most notably the shifting sandbars and violent tidal collisions of the Columbia River Bar, famously known as the "Graveyard of the Pacific"—the book illustrates how severe atmospheric and oceanographic forces perpetually threatened pioneer commerce. The text highlights how early industrial populations, physically constrained by impassable inland mountain ranges and impenetrable temperate rainforests, were forced to rely entirely on this volatile oceanic highway for basic survival and economic integration. Ultimately, the account captures the extreme physical severity of the Pacific edge, demonstrating how the devastating toll exacted by this unforgiving marine geography directly compelled the systematic development of coastal lighthouses and life-saving infrastructure, an absolute prerequisite for securing the most vital, yet dangerous, aquatic transit corridor on the western frontier.

316 pages illustrations, map (on lining papers) 23 cm

Gordon R. Newell’s Ships of the Inland Sea: The Story of the Puget Sound Steamboats chronicles the aggressive maritime subjugation and localized commercial integration of a densely forested, deep-water labyrinth carved into the Pacific edge. The narrative maps how the severe environmental realities of this volatile marine topography—defined by plunging, glacier-carved fjords, treacherous tidal narrows, and the towering, impenetrable barricades of old-growth coastal rainforests—initially completely severed early homesteaders from terrestrial transit, forcing them to rely exclusively on the sheltered aquatic highway of the inland sea. By detailing the explosive deployment and cutthroat industrial competition of the "Mosquito Fleet"—a heavy, steam-driven armada engineered specifically to navigate dangerous island channels and muscle colossal timber and passenger loads between isolated shoreline camps—the text illustrates how the economic survival and civic cohesion of the territory were strictly dictated by the urgent necessity of mastering this complex hydrological network. Ultimately, the account demonstrates that violently dominating this formidable aquatic environment and engineering a robust, localized marine transit grid to conquer the profound overland isolation of the settlements were the absolute prerequisites for binding a fragmented wilderness into a highly integrated, mechanized maritime empire.

ix, 241 pages, [14] pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Authored by regional historian Tony Bamonte, Sheriffs, 1911-1989: A History of Murders in the Wilderness of Washington's Last County chronicles the grim true-crime history, law enforcement challenges, and violent frontier legacies of remote Pend Oreille County. The book investigates a series of harrowing homicide cases, missing persons mysteries, and complex investigations handled by local sheriffs operating across a sprawling, densely forested wilderness bordering Idaho and Canada. Through meticulous archival research, newspaper accounts, and police records, the text examines how rural law enforcement struggled to maintain order in an isolated landscape plagued by rugged terrain and transient populations. A keen insight drawn from the work is how regional crime reporting exposes the dark underbelly of wilderness escapism; by documenting how rugged isolation routinely attracted desperate outlaws and shielded violent criminals, the narrative shatters the romanticized myth of the peaceful frontier, revealing instead a lawless hinterland where justice was constantly undermined by vast geography.

251 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

"Coastal historian Jeanette Taylor unveils the unique past of Twin Islands. Twin Islands form part of the lacey fringe at the southern edge of the Discovery Islands archipelago, where it meets the north Salish Sea. This is the interface between wilderness and urban settlement. To the north, heavily treed slopes rise vertically from the sea and fast tides churn through the constricted passages of a maze of islands and inlets. Navigating these waters is a white-knuckle challenge many recreational boaters avoid, ending their travels to the east in Desolation Sound Marine Park. To the south, the topography relaxes into a more habitable environment of open waters, villages, towns and highways. Those who do find their way to Twin are richly rewarded by a beautiful and tranquil destination--with a fascinating past. Discovery of a trove of sepia-toned pictures of Twin Islands from the late 1930s drew Jeanette Taylor to research and document the history of the islands. She found a live-wire cast of characters typical of remote places, including a one-legged sheep farmer; an aristocratic Irish priest who was the victim of an unsolved murder; American tycoons fleeing Japan on the cusp of World War II; German royalty; and an anonymous heiress who rescued the islands from logging. Through it all, Taylor found a thread among Twin's people, passed from one generation to the next--like an invisible torch handed over with the deed: a love of nature and the place. Illustrated with historical photos and engagingly written, Sheltering in the Back Rush is an important addition to Harbour Publishing's catalogue of coastal BC history."-- Provided by publisher

160 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Stories of the Wishram chief Tsagaglalal and Coyote. Authored by Willa Holmes and Anderson Benally, She Who Watches explores the rich history, spiritual significance, and cultural legacy surrounding the famous Columbia River petroglyph known as Tsagaglalal, located near the Dalles. The book weaves together Native oral traditions, historical documentation, and Indigenous perspectives to illuminate the sacred rock art site that has overlooked the river valley for centuries. Through these collected narratives, the text honors the profound spiritual connection regional tribes maintain with ancestral sacred places despite the inundation of the landscape by modern dams. A keen insight drawn from the work is how ancient rock art functions as an eternal sentinel of tribal sovereignty; by enduring through eras of profound ecological and political displacement, figures like Tsagaglalal serve as silent legal and spiritual witnesses asserting an unbroken Indigenous title to the land that industrial modernization could never submerge.

ix, 37 pages : color illustrations ; 28 cm

Shaw Island is the smallest of the ferry-served islands in the San Juan Archipelago of Washington State. It boasts a store, a school, a community building, and a wonderful, private, volunteer-run library and museum. The Shaw Island Library and Historical Society was founded in 1966. A year later, two one-acre lots were donated for a building site and the original logs of a homestead cabin were donated to serve as the future Shaw Island Museum. Many generous donations from island volunteers, families, friends, and institutions formed a collection that continues to grow, preserving the heritage of this unique island community.In 1994 Fran Hilen was serving as Curator when Dorothy Powell volunteered as Librarian for the Shaw Island Library and Historical Society. Quietly, they decided to collaborate, writing a remarkable book about the history of Shaw Island beginning in pre-history, through the time of the early settlers, to their present day in the mid-1990's. In the original introduction, the authors invite the community to "add to the history for present and future residents and friends of Shaw Island."The Historical Society, aided by a dedicated team of Shaw Island volunteers, have taken Dorothy and Fran at their word and have supplemented their text with more than 600 historic photos, maps, historic documents, and newspaper clippings. Biographies and quotes from past Shaw Islanders, some of whom left behind prolific daily journals, give us insight into events and a past way of life.

166 pages, photos

"Carved into a rock overlooking the Columbia River stands the arresting image of Tsagigla'lal, or "She Who Watches," an ancient female chief. As the Wishram people recount, when men replaced women in positions of power, Tsagigla'lal was turned to stone by Coyote so that she could forever guide her community and guard its development. Using the story of She Who Watches as her guide, Armitage shows that even though women were barred from positions of public authority until recently, they have always worked quietly and informally to assure the stability and security of their families and communities. Women's community-building and cooperative skills have been decisive in developing the societies of the Pacific Northwest--Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana, and British Columbia. Like She Who Watches, women have never been mere observers, but watchful guardians and active shapers of the public good. Drawing on her three decades of research and teaching and based on hundreds of secondary sources, Armitage's account explores the varied ways in which, beginning in the earliest times and continuing to the present, women of all races and ethnicities have made the history of our region. An accessible introduction for general readers and scholars alike, Shaping the Public Good restores a missing piece of Pacific Northwest history by demonstrating the part that women--"the famous, the forgotten, and all the women in between"--have always played in establishing their families and building communities."-- Provided by publisher

349 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Here you will recapture the Shaniko of pioneer days through the eyes of old-timers who have shared with the author their memories, records and photographs. There are interviews with more than fifty long-time residents, with colorful, firsthand accounts of living at the close of the pioneer period. It is written with folksy insights into the daily lives of the people whose town, for a few years, became a wool empire in the wilderness. Nearly one hundred fifty previously unpublished photos; map and chart locating homes and buildings; comprehensive index. 256 pages.

ix, 245 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

"In 1973, Louise Wagenknecht was just another college graduate, but unlike many, she wanted to go home, back to the Klamath Mountains where she was raised. When a job offer from the Klamath National Forest gave her that chance, she jumped at it. She landed in the logging town of Happy Camp, where she'd spent part of her childhood, as chronicled in her previous memoirs, White Poplar, Black Locust and Light on the Devils. With Shadows on the Klamath, Louise Wagenknecht completes her trilogy about life in remote northwestern California. In this new work, she recounts her years in the Forest Service, starting as a clerical worker on the Klamath National Forest before moving to a field position where she did everything from planting trees to fighting fires. Her story is about a Forest Service in transition, as forest management practices began to shift. Not least among these changes was the presence of women in the ranks-a change that many in the Forest Service resisted. Wagenknecht blends the personal and professional to describe land management in the West and the people who do it-their friendships, rivalries, and rural communities. Anyone with an interest in the Klamath-Siskiyou region, or the history of women in natural resource agencies, or the many issues associated with industrial forestry, should read this book for its valuable firsthand perspective. General readers interested in the rural West and personal memoir will also be richly rewarded"-- Provided by publisher

xi, 242 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Shadow Tribe offers the first in-depth history of the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River Indians -- the defiant River People whose ancestors refused to settle on the reservations established for them in central Oregon and Washington. Largely overlooked in traditional accounts of tribal dispossession and confinement, their story illuminates the persistence of off-reservation Native communities and the fluidity of their identities over time. Cast in the imperfect light of federal policy and dimly perceived by non-Indian eyes, the flickering presence of the Columbia River Indians has followed the treaty tribes down the difficult path marked out by the forces of American colonization. Based on more than a decade of archival research and conversations with Native people, Andrew Fisher’s groundbreaking book traces the waxing and waning of Columbia River Indian identity from the mid-nineteenth through the late twentieth centuries. Fisher explains how, despite policies designed to destroy them, the shared experience of being off the reservation and at odds with recognized tribes forged far-flung river communities into a loose confederation called the Columbia River Tribe. Environmental changes and political pressures eroded their autonomy during the second half of the twentieth century, yet many River People continued to honor a common heritage of ancestral connection to the Columbia, resistance to the reservation system, devotion to cultural traditions, and detachment from the institutions of federal control and tribal governance. At times, their independent and uncompromising attitude has challenged the sovereignty of the recognized tribes, earning Columbia River Indians a reputation as radicals and troublemakers even among their own people. Shadow Tribe is part of a new wave of historical scholarship that shows Native American identities to be socially constructed, layered, and contested rather than fixed, singular, and unchanging. From his vantage point on the Columbia, Fisher has written a pioneering study that uses regional history to broaden our understanding of how Indians thwarted efforts to confine and define their existence within narrow reservation boundaries.

xi, 337 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Published in 1921 by the Pacific Northwest's most famous and self-promoted trailblazer, Ezra Meeker, Seventy Years of Progress in Washington is a deeply personal memoir that doubles as a triumphalist history of the territory's evolution. The text chronicles Meeker’s grueling 1852 overland migration via the Oregon Trail, his early homesteading struggles in the Puget Sound region, his highly lucrative tenure as the "Hop King of the World" in Puyallup, and the rapid industrial urbanization of Washington State. Serving as both an autobiographical adventure and a civic retrospective, the book captures the staggering velocity of change from remote wilderness to modern industrial state within a single human lifetime.

A keen insight drawn from the work is how Meeker successfully weaponized his own longevity to elevate the pioneer generation into an untouchable moral aristocracy; by actively marketing himself as the living embodiment of westward expansion, Meeker transformed the ecologically and socially destructive realities of colonization into a nostalgic, heroic spectacle. His narrative effectively demanded that modern residents revere the pioneer struggle not merely as history, but as the state's sacred founding mythology, thereby insulating the colonial project from any critical moral scrutiny.

381, [2], 52 pages, 14 unnumbered leaves of plates : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Seven Shillings a Year: The History of Vancouver Island by Charles Lillard is a 1986 popular history—awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing—that offers a sweeping narrative of the island from pre-contact Indigenous cultures through the end of World War II. The title references the modest annual rent the Hudson's Bay Company paid the British Crown for the island upon establishing Fort Victoria. The book chronicles the early Spanish and English maritime explorations, the subsequent influx of miners, loggers, and farmers, and the evolution of Victoria from a rowdy frontier outpost to a cosmopolitan capital. Ultimately, it serves as an accessible, engaging, and pioneering single-volume overview of Vancouver Island's colonial and civic development, though modern scholars often contextualize it within the historiographical perspectives of its time.

viii, 248 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

Bob Bossin’s Settling Clayoquot provides a detailed documentary and oral history chronicling late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century non-Indigenous settlement along the remote west coast of Vancouver Island. Utilizing settler journals, store ledgers, and archival accounts, the text examines how early mercantile outposts, cannery operations, and homesteads—anchored around locales such as Stubbs Island (Clayoquot) and Tofino Inlet—were superimposed directly onto the ancient maritime territories, seasonal harvesting grounds, and canoe corridors of the Nuu-chah-nulth nations, particularly the Tla-o-qui-aht, Ahousaht, and Hesquiaht. Bossin emphasizes the profound logistical isolation of this exposed Pacific coastline, demonstrating how early storekeepers, sealers, and homesteaders were entirely dependent on interdependent alliances and day-to-day trade with Nuu-chah-nulth communities for open-water canoe transport, subsistence provisions, and navigational expertise. Ultimately, the narrative captures the fragile transition from a collaborative coastal trade nexus to a regulated colonial resource frontier, illustrating how pioneer maritime infrastructure relied upon the established Indigenous marine geography of Clayoquot Sound.

Sound heritage series, no. 33

iv, 76 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm.

In early America, the notion that settlers ought to receive undeveloped land for free was enormously popular among the rural poor and social reformers. Well into the Jacksonian era, however, Congress considered the demand fiscally and economically irresponsible. Increasingly, this led proponents to cast the idea as a military matter: Land grantees would supplant troops in the efforts to take the continent over from Indian nations and rival colonial powers. Julius Wilm's book examines the free land debates of the 1790s to 1850s and reconstructs the settlement experiences under the donation laws for Florida (1842) and the Oregon Territory (1850). Both laws promised to bring the interests of poorer whites and their government into a more harmonious relation - to the exclusion of African Americans and for the explicit purpose of displacing Native peoples. Drawing on new records, Wilm details the trajectory of settlements and shows how the settler-imperialist experiments fell apart and undermined the rationale of the donation laws. After home seekers fled Florida due to malaria and militias in Oregon triggered uncontrollable violence, settlers came to be seen as unreliable agents of government aims. "This is the single most detailed exploration of free land in antebellum America. Wilm does a marvelous job exploring the limits of settler colonialism as a framework for settlement in Florida, where it failed. For the case of Oregon, he shows that settler occupation was appealing to federal legislators because it would 'substitute the ax, the plow, and the hoe, for the gun, the sword, and the bayonet.' That the government knowingly held out a promise of free land in order to encourage squatter sovereignty is a most compelling argument." Amy S. Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University "This is a skillful study of American proposals for the distribution of free public lands that predated the Homestead Act of 1862. Tracing discussions of land policy in Congress, distribution schemes in Arkansas, Florida, and Oregon, and the actual consequences of these schemes on the ground, Settlers as Conquerors offers both political and social history, showing how 'free land' shaped Indian Removal, settler colonialism, and race in the antebellum American West." Christopher Clark, University of Connecticut

284 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Examines the history and purpose of lighthouses and describes notable examples around the world, including the building of St. George Reef in Tillamook, Lighthouses in San Diego, San Francisco, Puget Sound, Columbia Coast, and Alaska

232 pages illustrations 23 cm

"Once the largest silver producer in the world, Wallace became notorious for labor uprisings, hard drinking, gambling and prostitution. As late as 1991, illegal brothels openly flourished because locals believed that sex work prevented rape and bolstered the economy, so long as it was regulated and confined to a particular area of town. The madams enjoyed unprecedented status as influential businesswomen, community leaders and philanthropists, while elsewhere a growing aversion to the sex trade drove red-light districts underground."--Page 4 of cover

222 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

"In 1846, French Canadian-born A.M.A. Blanchet was named the first Catholic bishop of Walla Walla in the area soon to become Washington Territory. He arrived at Fort Walla Walla in late September 1847, part of the largest movement over the Oregon Trail to date. During the thirty-two years of Blanchet's tenure in the Northwest, the region underwent profound social and political change as the Hudson's Bay Company moved headquarters and many operations north following the Oregon Treaty, U.S. government and institutions were established, and Native American inhabitants dealt with displacement and discrimination. Blanchet chronicled both his own pastoral and administrative life and his observations on the world around him in a voluminous correspondence-almost nine hundred letters-to religious superiors and colleagues in Montreal, Paris, and Rome; funding organizations; other missionaries; and U.S. officials. This selection of Blanchet's letters provides a fascinating view of Washington Territory as seen through the eyes of an intelligent, devout, energetic, perceptive, and occasionally irascible cleric and administrator. Almost all of Blanchet's correspondence was in French. Roberta Stringham Brown and Patricia O'Connell Killen have chosen forty-five of those letters to translate and annotate, creating a history of early Washington that provides new insights into relationships, events, and personalities. A number of the letters provide first-hand glimpses of familiar events, such as the Whitman tragedy, the California gold rush, Indian wars and land displacement, transportation advances, and the domestic material culture of a frontier borderland. Others voice the hardships of historically underrepresented groups, including Native Americans, Metis, and French Canadians, and the experiences of ordinary people in growing population centers such as Seattle, Walla Walla, and Vancouver, Washington. Still others describe the struggle to bring social, medical, and educational institutions to the region, a struggle in which women religious workers played a key role. The letters-and the editors' fascinating annotations-provide an engaging and insightful look at an important period in the history of the Pacific Northwest and southwest Canada. Roberta Stringham Brown is professor of French at Pacific Lutheran University. Patricia O'Connell Killen is professor of religious studies and academic vice president at Gonzaga University"-- Provided by publisher

xviii, 272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Prolonged violence in the Horn of Africa, the northeastern corner of the continent, has led growing numbers of Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis to flee to the United States. Despite the enmity created by centuries of conflict, they often find themselves living as neighbors in their adopted cities, with their children as class-mates in school. In many ways, they are successfully navigating life in their new home; however, they continue to struggle to bridge old ethnic divisions and find salaam, or peace, with one another. News from home fuels historical grievances and perpetuates tensions within their communities, delaying acculturation, undermining attempts at reconciliation, and sabotaging the opportunity to reach the American Dream. In conversations with forty East African immigrants living in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, Sandra Chait captures the immigrants' struggle for identity in the face of competing stories and documents how some individuals have been able to transcend the ghosts from the past and extend a tentative hand to their former enemies.

xviii, 298 pages : map ; 24 cm