The Pull of Moving Water

By Alice Koskela

In this beautiful coming-of-age memoir, Alice Koskela captures that peculiar mix of innocence and ruthlessness which is childhood--that time when we know far less than we think we do, and far more than any adult might guess. The Pull of Moving Water describes the cultural simmering of the 1950s and the explosion of the 1960s from the vantage point of a girl growing up inside those years, yet impossibly removed from anything that seems to matter. She's stuck on a farm in southern Idaho, a state so remote and uncool that Dick Clark makes fun of it on American Bandstand.

The Pull of Moving Water is stunning in its honesty--about growing up gentile among the Mormons, about what the Cold War did to children, particularly those in the path of mysterious, powdery "bomb rains" that blew in from the Nevada tests, about the cruelty of a breast-obsessed culture for adolescent girls. It will pull you in and take you back, a gracefully written story that recalls the joy and pain of childhood and of an era, lived out in a place that was not, after all, so far away.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874221803
• ISBN13: 9780874221800
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Washington State University Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

a lovely story

A beautiful intimate story of a young girl growing up in rugged Idaho.This is not a story full of sweetness, but of the tough life small farmers and their family encoutered in their fight for survival. I loved it from beginning to end

This is a fearless memoir of growing up on an Idaho farm.

Okay, so she's one of my best friends BUT EVEN SO, I never knew she could write this well. Her memory is sharp, her observations hard and clear, and her insights are not for the polite or faint of heart. Koskela's early life in the harsh world of Idaho farming country is told with wit and clarity. It may not be gracious but it is REAL and you will find yourself laughing, tsk, tsking and looking back with a new vision on your own childhood. I've known Alice for over 20 years--she's incapable of telling even the most innocent of white lies and so understandably she has written a book of truths. This will by MY Christmas gift this year!

A beautiful book

I thoroughly enjoyed this graceful, sweet, honest and sometimes heart wrenching memoir. As the illustrator, I was honored to be a part of it.