Alaska Dispatch

The front cover of Heather's second book, "Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs."

Your inspiration and your subjects are your family, friends and neighbors, those who live around you in a small, geographically isolated Alaska town. What's it like to write about the people with whom you volunteer at the hospice, sit on local boards, meet in the grocery store, and pray at church?

Well ... it's just my life. I have been writing about Haines for a long time now. In addition to writing obituaries for the local paper, I've told stories from Haines on National Public Radio, in The Christian Science Monitor and in a long-running Anchorage newspaper column. Because of our isolation, though, not a lot of my neighbors knew about my writing beyond Haines's own Chilkat Valley News. When I was working on my first book, "If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name," one of my colleagues on the school board thought I was joking when I said I couldn't make a committee meeting because I was writing a book and had a deadline that day. Since the book was published, people are obviously much more aware. I hear, "This is not for publication" a lot, and that's fine. At the same time, one elderly woman told me it was too bad her husband hadn't died sooner, because then he could have been in "If You Lived Here," which was largely based on the obituaries I write in Haines. I'm also very mindful of what I should say and not say. The line I usually draw, especially in this book (which was harder than the last one in that these stories are more intimate), is that if I'm at a public event -- a funeral for 400 in the local theater or the community Veteran's Day dinner where a letter from a soldier is read aloud, then I feel free to use that material. I am careful to present stories as my interpretation of events: This is how it moved me and why. Also, since my time at The Monitor, I've always tried to hold to that paper's editorial guideline, which is "To injure no man but bless all mankind." But I wrestle with this everyday.

Is there a "Heather Lende The Writer" persona, separate from "Heather Lende Going about her Daily Living or her Otherwise-Scheduled-Life"'?

Yes and no. My husband says no, but I know that my writer voice is my best and most polite self. In real life I swear more.

Do you arrive at a community function eager for good material, with an active ear to the ground. And do you ever hope to head out of the house without tripping over a new subject?

I can't help myself. I always have a pen and paper in my pocket, and often end up writing on napkins, basketball game programs, and even the church leaflet. Not all of that ends up being printed though. Much of it is still in a pile on my desk. And, yes, I sometimes I wish I lived in a place where I didn't know everyone, but so far, I haven't ever wished that there were less going on or that my life here were less ... involving. One of the reasons my husband Chip and I chose to raise our family in Haines is for that very reason -- we wanted to be truly connected to a community, with whatever entanglements and responsibilities that entails.

The book is subtitled "Friends, Family, and Faith in Small-town Alaska." How religious are you?

I'm an Episcopalian, so that means I don't talk about this stuff much and I was a little worried about mixing it up in this book. But I wanted to write about my accident -- I was hit by a truck five years ago while riding my bike and I'm lucky to be alive -- and then my mother died. I couldn't write about either of these events without exploring what a large role my faith played in my responses to both. I don't think I'm particularly religious, but I am faithful and I believe in God. All my life I have attended church most Sundays, I say Grace at dinner, and I pray, often.

Where does the title of your book come from?

That is my mother's last communication with us. Before she went into a surgery she knew she might not survive, my father asked her if there were anything she wanted to be sure he and my sisters and I knew, just in case. She was on a ventilator and couldn't speak, so she wrote, "Take good care of the garden and the dogs." They are words to live by.

Is life in Alaska your inspiration or would you be a writer if you lived in, say, New Jersey? And do you self-identify as an Alaskan?

I think, yes, the answer is I would be a writer if I lived in New Jersey. But I would be writing about something else, and I suppose I would be someone else too. Moving to Alaska in my twenties, especially to this small isolated town, has completely made me the adult -- and thus the writer -- that I am. I hunt and fish and snowshoe. The longer I'm here, the more grateful I am for this life in this remarkable place. I want to share it with the world. I'm an Alaskan and an Alaskan writer. My children were all born here and, now I have an Alaskan grandchild.

What do you hope to share with your readers through their experience of reading this book?

I suppose I hope to give readers a window into a specific time and place and, by being so local, and so personal, tap into emotions they may have too. I was quite literally run over by a truck but, if you think about it, by the time we reach a certain age, most of us have been hit by a proverbial truck in one way or another. Maybe it was cancer, or some other brush with mortality. I think we are all more alike than different and my story may help people see the value in their own stories. Also, I like to think I'm adding to the history of our time and place, like the pages put in the time capsule in Our Town. In this day and age of homogenized housing, education, food, cars, furniture -- where so much of the country looks the same and feels the same -- it's even more critical that we showcase what is unique in our own experiences. Those of us who are able tell the stories that aren't the same as everyone else's, should do it, you know?

One last question: I understand you have the most intricately roofed chicken coop on earth ... care to elaborate?

My husband runs a lumberyard. I like to build things with his materials. I helped build the apartment above the lumber store where my daughter now lives, a cabin in the woods, and our house. I wanted the chicken coop to be pretty, so the roof is gabled just like our house, and it has shingles and two big windows so my hens (there are four at the moment) can see out from their roosting pole. The door was made with cedar tongue-and-groove boards, and I'm glad, because it survived two bear attacks, although now we have an electric fence that we turn on at night.

Heather Lende's newest book, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, is out now in Alaska bookstores. To read the schedule of Heather's book tour, to contact her, or to read her new blog, "The News From Small-Town Alaska," visit www.heatherlende.com.

Editor's note: Heather's book tour will bring her to Anchorage, Palmer and Juneau in coming weeks, with several appearances scheduled for the Lower 48. Check out the complete tour schedule on her homepage. If you enjoyed the above exchange, go to 49 Writers and read some irreverent (and informative) answers Heather didn't include.

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