thrice all american: Tacoma Book Club, Edition 2: Salmon Beach: The Narrows Camps

Tacoma Book Club, Edition 2: Salmon Beach: The Narrows Camps

· Posted Tuesday September 5, 2006 by jamie

For our second Tacoma Book Club selection, we will be reviewing a little piece of historical fiction with a local slant, Salmon Beach: The Narrows Camps by Royal LaPlante.

As always, purchase if you can from a local bookseller, but you can purchase from Amazon via this link or by clicking on the image to the right.

(Amazon doesn’t have an image of the cover, so I took my own picture. Appreciate the beautiful rainbow-colors. Very strange. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get a signed copy like mine…)

So this book is a step down from our previous selection. That is not to say that it isn’t a good read, but just that it doesn’t offer the same level of literary merit.

Salmon Beach focuses on the the varied fictional adventures of Jim Gerber, who comes to Tacoma from the East Coast to work on a boat in the Sound. Following an injury, he ends up attending the University of Puget Sound (first at the original 9th and Yakima location, and later at Sixth and Sprague, both predating the current location). Eventually, he ends up becoming a fisherman (finding his “true true vocation”, according to the book jacket) and joining the first fishermans camps along the Narrows in the area that eventually developed into the Salmon Beach community.

Character development is not complex; Jim and other characters come across as basically flawless individuals. Some of the writing is a bit trite (like when Jim’s boss, a ships captain, gives an historical recap of the naming of Gig Harbor, complete with dates). And for some reason, there are multiple characters named Mary, which I found to be a bit confusing.

But complaints aside, I actually found this to be an enjoyable read. Many interesting historical and pseudo-historical details on the area were included, and the descriptions of boating around Puget Sound added an interesting geographical perspective. I would say if you are willing to approach this as a good diversion with a little bit of history, and not expect great literature, you will find Salmon Beach: The Narrows Camps enjoyable.

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