Book Review

By Derryll White

Sombrowski, Gordon (2011). What Echo Heard.

Right off I have to say that I am pleased that Oolichan Books is finally bringing some new B.C. Interior authors forward. When the press was purchased and moved to Fernie a couple of years ago I anticipated a flood of new voices. ‘The Red Berry Review’ saw a single issue, and that is where I first read Gordon Sombrowski’s breakout story.

I remembered him as a teenager; thoughtful and often moved to the background by his more exuberant younger brother and sister. His story ‘The Baker’s Wife’ was redolent of a Fernie I remembered as well. My brother and sisters grew up in Fernie and I visited often, observing the clash of coal culture and snow culture. To go back today, clearly snow culture has triumphed. From the first page the author pulls us into a time machine, dialing it back 40 years or so.

My dad was a Fernie druggist and he made deliveries down to the South Country and Rock Creek, as well as out to the camps. And always he drank with the people there. Many nights I travelled roads in the Flathead, or through Elko and back to Cokato, looking for my dad’s truck in the ditch or parked alongside the road with him slumped over the wheel. That was how business was done in Fernie then. And that was how men lived, nothing effete or glamorous like a cocktail, whuh! From the start Gordon Sombrowski catches a time that the reader knows is gone. His muse certainly does echo in my memory.

There is a dated nature to the stories, a timeliness that places them as a body of work describing a time and place that no longer exists. I find this appealing as it is memory and disappearance within my own lifetime. ‘What Echo Heard’ is a dialogue of place, told carefully and in a most appealing way. I enjoyed the book thoroughly and look forward to more from Gordon Sombrowski.

If I have a criticism it is simply that a couple of the stories might have been a little shorter. ‘A Little Tea and Some Justice’ in particular might benefit from some editing. But Gordon has a deft way of catching the social banter and class-consciousness that knits the story together. This is a book that all East Kootenay residents might find rewarding.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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