Traplines: Coming Home to Sawtooth Valley

“A stirring account of [Rember’s] return to his childhood home.... His ardor is contagious, inviting readers to see once again the majesty of the natural world and to love what we find.”

—Bernadette Murphy (Los Angeles Times)

In his memoir, John Rember recounts his experiences of growing up in the mountains of Idaho in a time when the fish were wild in the rivers, horses were brought into the valley each spring from their winter pasture, and electric light still seemed magical. Today those same experiences no longer seem to possess the authenticity they once did. In his journey home, Rember discovers how the West, both as a place in which to live and as a terrain of the imagination, has been transformed. And he wonders whether his recollections of what once was prevent him from understanding his past and appreciating what he found when he returned home. In Traplines, Rember excavates the hidden desires that color memory and shows us how, once revealed, they can allow us to understand anew the stories we tell ourselves.

Awards

Traplines was named the 2003 Idaho Book of the Year by the Idaho Library Association.

Reviews

Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried
“Traplines is above all else a beautiful piece of prose, elegant yet tough-minded, expansive yet tightly made, sophisticated yet moving. One perfectly tempered sentence follows upon another. Part remembrance, part self-portrait, part philosophy, part ecological update, part homage to a place on our earth called the Sawtooth Valley, this wonderful, wonderful book is one to which I will return with joy many times.”

Noam Reuveni, Seattle Weekly
“Vivid descriptions...[and] fine writing...make for humorous, touching, and ultimately philosophical reading.”

Charlotte Freeman, San Francisco Chronicle
“What distinguishes this memoir is Rember’s wry, clear-eyed voice and his tenacious quest to capture just what it is he loves about this place and his life in it, to capture the full measure of its beauty in language that can stand up to the place itself. He succeeds admirably.”

Dan R. Barber, The Dallas Morning News
“Elk hunting and fate hunting in the same book? Yes. Nicely paired, too, like Stilton and port.... Be prepared for—no, look forward to—a thoughtful story about a literate, natural world-loving man who has happily glided into middle age. The world around him, especially the mountains, is an apt, gracefully written metaphor for the man.... With Traplines, Mr. Rember demonstrates what others before him have denied: You can go home again. In fact, for him, there was no choice. For him, there was no escape.”

Publishers Weekly
“As Rember relives his youth, his focus moves away from the ways his surroundings have changed to the ways he has changed.… He used to think life was about ‘free will,’ but now, feeling the tug of his own history, he can settle for ‘free fall.’ Rember writes sentences so elegantly crafted they seem effortless, tells stories so well turned readers will want to read them aloud. Beneath the writing, it’s Rember’s voyage to self-consciousness that gives his story power and meaning.”

Kirkus Reviews
“A lyrical memoir of country life, and a requiem, of sorts, for one of the last best places…. Rember draws moral lessons rendered in nicely epigrammatic, often humorous turns: ‘I had learned that the magic can fall out of things and that you can be involved in rites of passage that turn out to be all about somebody else.’ ‘Bliss, Idaho, is just like Saudi Arabia.... Except in Bliss, the wind blows harder and the people aren’t any fun.’ Plenty authentic: a graceful addition to the literature of the American West, and a pleasure to read.”

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