Monthly Archives: April 2010

April's Book Club with author Linda L. Hunt (center)

This month’s book club meeting was a special treat; Linda Hunt, the author of Bold Spirit not only joined us for our discussion but hosted the meeting at her spacious and inviting retreat center. Linda greeted us with a warm smile and a large pitcher of herbal sun tea as we began to assemble ourselves outside to take advantage of the opportunity to sit in her gardens with the sounds of babbling water and birdsong in the background.

Once everyone settled around the table Linda introduced herself and gave us a brief history of how the retreat center came to be. She and her husband created The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship with a focus on service in urban America, developing nations and environmental projects. The center was inspired by these three values possessed by her daughter, Krista, who was killed at the age of 25 in an automobile accident in Bolivia. The center serves as a meeting space for the organization in many different ways, sometimes for conferences, at other times for retreats; always, I imagine, it serves compassion, generosity and love.

Our discussion about Bold Spirit had much to do with imagining the twenty-first century equivalent of two women crossing the nation by foot in 1896. Not only was this a difficult thing to wrap our minds around but equally difficult was the idea that this story was nearly lost through the silencing of it by the family.

The act of silencing stories or, more importantly, the practice of passing along family stories instead is the message Linda would like her readers to hear. She talked about the importance of finding a way to include this piece in the story. In the book’s closing Linda states that sometimes silencing of stories is done to protect a family’s image in the face of situations like abuse, alcoholism or origins of birth but that, “at times the silencing of such stories affect those who need to hear them to correctly interpret events in their own lives.”

Remember this and consider whether you participate in the silencing or sharing of your own family’s stories. Do what you can to be your family’s storyteller and please do read Bold Spirit, a story that show’s an earlier picture of our city’s history and invites us all to contribute our own.

The Shrinking Violet’s Book Group has chosen:

Bold Spirit

by local author Linda Lawrence Hunt

In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America.

Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb.

Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women’s achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

You can find the book in the Local Interest section at Auntie’s Bookstore.  Make sure you let them know it’s for the book club so you can get a discount.

Our book group meetings usually take place on the third Sunday of every month.  However, this meeting will be on the fourth Sunday, April 25th, at the Linda Lawrence Hunt’s retreat house on the north side of Spokane!

Join us on:

Sunday April 25th
1-3 pm
Linda Lawrence Hunt’s Meeting Place (Address TBA)

Click Here to RSVP on Facebook

If you cannot make this meeting and would like to join us for our May meeting, we will be reading:

Prisoner of Tehran

by Marina Nemat
May 16th
Location: TBA

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or would like to recommend future books for us to read:

Becky – beckyhuss [at] gmail [dot] com
Hilary – hilwhitt [at] hotmail [dot] com
Monique – moneeeq [at] gmail [dot] com

If you would like to start a discussion or have any comments about this book, please post a comment on this post.