The Same River Twice
Poems by Lauren Coodley
Lauren Coodley’s "The Same River Twice" honors the people
and places that have shaped her life.
This book is her first collection of poetry--a memoir in
verse that begins with her earliest recollections and moves
all the way into the present.
"In the midst of great change and sudden disasters, as
bulldozers ravage the orchards of Napa and old friends die,
Lauren Coodley writes of the stubborn determination of ordinary
women to lead lives of beauty and meaning in passionate,
lyrical poems of mourning, courage, persistence, survival,
and celebration."
—Mary Mackey, poet and novelist, author of Sugar Zone
". . . I read a little at a time, savoring bright epiphanies.
Lauren Coodley has a fine sense of rhythm and timing, but
more importantly she has a sense of moments passing, flashbulbs
of joy, of sorrow and of shame. She draws the reader into
the work, letting them squeeze the grape of each line and
savor the "sweet juice to wash the dirt down.""
—Kevin Fisher-Paulson, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle;
author of A Song for Lost Angels
"Her compassion for people, acute powers of observation,
and fine sensibility to the power of words and metaphor
all contribute to this new collection. Her poems powerfully
sculpt her life the way she once tried to sculpt her body
with all its “hungers” (“Body Sculpture”) and reflect the
wisdom she has gained through women mentors, friendships,
solitude, and growing sense of mortality. Coodley’s collection
sings: read it and enjoy!"
—Judy Wells, poet, Everything Irish, Call Home, and The
Glass Ship
Napa Valley Chronicles by Lauren Coodley
Available from
Napa Bookmine,
The History Press,
Copperfields
Books and at the Napa Valley Wine Train station.
In 1905, Napa’s mayor, J.A. Fuller, announced, “Napa
for half a century has been slumbering in a Rip Van Winkle
sleep but she has awakened at last.” Back then, fifteen
cents bought coffee and a donut at the Depot and Sawyer’s
Tannery made soft leather baseball gloves.
In this collection, local author Lauren Coodley reimagines
the unvarnished country life of historic Napa Valley through
the stories of notables like postmaster Ernest Kincaid,
Napa Register reporter Phyllis King, firefighter historian
Rita Bordwell and Brewster’s owners Rachel and Larry Friedman.
Trace the region’s lasting legacy, from the time when a
horse and buggy purchased Browns Valley to the days when
art galleries replaced blue-collar businesses and the California
grape took center stage from Sunsweet prunes.
Preview
Reviews:
"Lauren Coodley’s “Napa Valley Chronicles” is a book
that crosses a number of genres and literary traditions.
Part storytelling, part “oral history” and part personal
memoir, the chronicles seem designed to become a kind of
future cultural artifact of a valley that is on a journey
of unrelenting transition. It is a book of literary snapshots
– snippets and images – rapidly threading its way from the
19th and 20th centuries, and onto the very threshold of
the 21st century."..."Published in 2013 by The History Press,
the book succeeds in creating something that is truly unique:
a kind of historical travelogue of Napa Valley characters
who flicker in and out of focus like the portraits of an
animator’s flip book. It’s a good and nourishing read with
lots of historical photos."
Tom Stockwell, St.Helena Star
Link
"I love the book! I got five copies through Amazon.com,
and have already given some away, but I need more for some
more members of my family. Of course, I loved to see my
mother Phyllis King brought to life in the book, but I'm
fascinated by every chapter. It's so interesting to see
history told through the eyes of some less usual sources...
women, minorities and ordinary people. You get a real feeling
for the changes that occurred throughout the years in Napa,
and how they affected everyone. Some stories are told from
your personal point of view, which makes them very engaging.
When you express nostalgia or regret for changes and transformations
that occurred over time, it adds a real depth of feeling
to the book. Great job!"
Liz Reyna
"From the extraordinary front cover photograph of Napa
a century ago as farmland and orchards to the shimmering
painting on the back cover, Napa Valley Chronicles is a
delightful book. California historian Lauren Coodley has
woven a rich and varied tapestry of stories and photographs
from the 19th century to the present. Although I lived in
Napa for 17 years and many of the names in this book are
familiar, I never knew most of this history, including that
Napa had a Chinatown, a Little Italy, and a neighborhood
where descendants of the Mexican land grantees lived on
streets bearing their names. (Full disclosure: my description
of Terrace Drive, where I lived, is included in the book).
I loved learning about pioneer women who farmed and raised
livestock, Japanese laborers, a nurse at the Asylum (as
Napa State Hospital was called), tannery workers, feminist
leaders, and the many other ordinary people who are given
a voice. This is people's history at its broadest and best."
By Nancy Manahan, on October 11, 2013
Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity
Intellectual by Lauren Coodley
Available Now from:
University of Nebraska Press,
and
University Press
Bookstore in Berkley
Listen to Lauren in audio interviews about this
book; with
New Books in American Studies , "Majority
Report with Sam Seder" and
"Writers
Voice" with Francesca Rheannon
Had Upton Sinclair not written a single book after The
Jungle, he would still be famous. But Sinclair was a mere
twenty-five years old when he wrote The Jungle, and over
the next sixty-five years he wrote nearly eighty more books
and won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. He was also a filmmaker,
labor activist, women’s rights advocate, and health pioneer
on a grand scale. This new biography of Sinclair underscores
his place in the American story as a social, political,
and cultural force, a man who more than any other disrupted
and documented his era in the name of social justice.
Reviews:
"In this engaging and ambitious biography Lauren Coodley
takes a fresh perspective on the life of the zealous muckraker
Upton Sinclair. Her book necessarily addresses many facets
of Sinclair’s life that would be familiar to historians
(such as the publication of The Jungle and the passage of
the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, Sinclair’s End Poverty
in California (epic) program, and his ill-fated gubernatorial
campaign in 1934). This book really shines in its treatment
of lesser-known aspects of Sinclair’s socialism, such as
his contemplations of historical Christianity and attempts
to reconcile religion and socialism, and his scathing attacks
on higher education..." —Justin Nordstrom,
The Journal of American History
- Sept. 2015
“Lauren Coodley’s perceptive account should awaken fresh
interest in one of the twentieth century’s more fascinating
cultural figures and his extraordinary—sadly, mostly forgotten—body
of work.”—Julie Salamon, author of Wendy and the Lost
Boys
“Upton Sinclair traversed the first half of the twentieth
century like a rogue star. His prodigious writing and activism
in the service of social justice perturbed the status quo,
awakening millions to everything from appalling working
conditions, poisoned food, and media bias to the rise of
fascism and environmental decline. Yet his determination
to lead a balanced and healthy life led some biographers
to disparage him as less than a full man. Lauren Coodley
rescues Sinclair from such critical condescension and reminds
us of the many lives that he packed into one even as he
moved the lives of both the common and the great.”—Gray
Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power,
Earthly Ruin
"Historian Coodley (California: A Multicultural Documentary
History) narrates little-known aspects of Sinclair’s life,
such as his gubernatorial campaign in California in 1934...Coodley’s
biography should renew interest in the works of this passionate
writer."
Publishers Weekly Review
"Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil! was the basis for Paul Thomas
Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood, and director David
Schimmer has spoken of adapting Sinclair’s most influential
novel, The Jungle. But who remembers that the muckraking
author took an active hand in filmmaking? That’s one of
the revelations in Lauren Coodley’s cogent, critical biography,
Upton Sinclair: California Socialist, Celebrity Intellectual
(published by University of Nebraska Press)..."
David Luhrssen, Express Milwaukee
"Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper sticker: “If you’re not
outraged, you’re not paying attention.” Upton Sinclair was
paying attention. This biography is a balanced but sympathetic
look at the idealistic, passionate man who wrote The Jungle
when he was just 25. ... Coodley emphasizes Sinclair’s support
for temperance and women’s suffrage (and other feminist
issues, including housework and childcare), and she shows
how those issues fit together in the early 20th century.
... I enjoyed this well-edited account, which moved right
along without undue verbiage, and yet gave a rounded, insightful
sense of Sinclair and his times"
Historical Novel Society
"...an invaluable look at Sinclair’s full life and influential
work and how much his long battle against worker oppression
remains relevant in today’s corporate and media-driven world."
— Carl Hays,
Booklist
More...
Napa State Hospital
By Patricia Prestinary, Foreword by Lauren Coodley. Arcadia
Press, 2014
Napa, because of its natural beauty and optimal conditions
for “moral treatment,” was chosen as the second site for
a state hospital to ease overcrowding in Stockton Asylum.
When the fully self-sustaining Napa Asylum opened in 1875,
it quickly filled to capacity and became home to many people
suffering from mental illness, alcoholism, grief, and depression.
More
Also available for purchase at the Napa Valley
Museum, Yountville.
Frankie's Journey: The Silk Road to Napa
By Stephanie Farrell Grohs and Lauren Coodley, with an
afterword by Rue Ziegler. The Mousetail Press, 2014
Frankie’s Journey traces the 1908 trek of an imaginary San
Francisco boy from his home at the Youth’s Directory, a
Catholic charity in San Francisco, to St. Joseph’s Institute,
an experimental farm in Napa County. There has never before
been a book about this extraordinary experiment in the rehabilitation
of street children utilizing the teaching of agricultural
skills – including silk cultivation.
More
Press Democrat Review:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/3057940-181/napa-authors-unveil-century-old-school
Napa Valley Farming
Available now from
Napa
Bookmine,
Arcadia Publishing,
Copperfields
Books and the Napa Wine Train station.
Napa, California
Napans tend more than grapevines. The area's diverse
soil and mild climate make possible a generous yield of
agricultural products. This book traces the cultivation
of these products through a chronology of Napa's farming
history, from indigenous food plants to the orchards that
were planted to feed gold miners -- orchards that would
soon function as both therapy and sustenance for the patients
in the newly created Asylum. Immigrants from Italy and Germany
and Japan and China joined newly emancipated slaves and
Mexican citizens who had settled here before the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Together they cultivated the land,
picked the fruit, nuts, and hops, cut the wheat, kept bees,
and tended livestock on dairy farms and cattle ranches.
Each chapter begins with a poem inspired by farming or a
recipe reflecting the valley's bounty. The scents of peaches,
apples, cherries, pears, prunes, and honey linger in the
imaginations of thousands of locals, while the trees, hives,
and vines continue to thrive wherever placed.
Read more here...
St Helena Star - review link
