Page Mi2 July 11, 1990. This Week LITERATURE » Disappearing Moon Cafe deserves award S is so often the case with regional- ly published titles, he three books presented this week vary greatly in their levels of achievement. One is a valuable historical work but so overburdened with minutiae that reading it re- quires considerable staying power. One is fascinating in con- tent and of historical sig- nificance but is the victim of Books West By MIKE STEELE time an indifferent handling. And one could and should be a contender for the next round of Governor-General’s awards. The latter is Disappearing Moon Cafe (Douglas & Mc- Intryre; 237 pp.; $24.95 in hardcover), the ‘biography’ of four generations of the Wong family in British Columbia. Disappearing Moon Cafe opens in the 1890s with a quest by young Wong Gwei Chang for the bones of men who died con- _Structing roads, railways and bridges in Western Canada. These skeletal remains he then sends back to China to allow their owners’ souls to gain eter- nal rest. Wong falls in love with a Na- tive woman but takes a Chinese wife and establishes a branch of the Wong family in the racially volatile West Coast port of Van- couver. This and succeeding generations of Wongs will be plagued by a variety of human passions and follies right into the late 1980s. The petty squabbles and prejudices of what was largely a peasant class permeated the Chinese-Canadian com- munities that sprang up across North America and yet this reality has lain largely in shadow until now. That Disap- pearing Moon Caje is able to il- luminate these cultural recesses is a tribute both to the pioneer- ing daring of author Sky Lee as well as her uncompromising if acerbic writing. Lee's characters, embroiled in a multi-generational tragedy wherein the personal happiness of the Wong men and women counts for little, are painfully real to the reader. So are the themes of bigotry (not at all one- sided), betrayal, duplicity and culture clash. The author, a self-styled feminist, told me in a recent in- terview that she felt her main audience for Disappearing Moon Cafe was women but, while the Wong women indeed suffer mightily, the lot of the Wong men is hardly better. Both sexes are the victims of forces which, while external in origin, are perpetuated by the victims SKY SHOULD BETHE LIMIT for Disappearing Moon Cafe , written by Sky Lee, who is pictured here. themselves. The doctrinaire myopia of the author aside, Disappearing Moon Cafe is an extraordinarily perceptive and original novel that will delight and disturb readers of Chinese and non- Chinese backgrounds, whether female or male. *E* E.A. Harris committed the cardinal sin of writing when he wrote Spokeshute - Skeena River Memory: he forgot his readers. Spokeshute (Orea; 237 pp.; $24.95 hardcover, $12.95 paper- ~ back) is both a history of the ghost town of Port Essington (known as Spokeshute to Skeena Natives) and a chronicle of the Harris family’s experience of this once-thriving, coastal (= This summer there'll be 55,501 Summer Barbeques but only INCREDIBLE SALE! idewalk Sale on now at Tillicum @ Our Sizzling Summer \ all! SHOP SAVE, WIN : with our frequent shopper program 2 for 1 value during our summer sidewalk sale! Receive 2 stamps for each purchase made from Wed. July 11= Sun. July 15, 1990. Complete your card to qualify for savings up to 25%! Then enter to win a CASIO Digital Piano courtesy of = CASCAD Ask at any Tillicum Mall store for details. E MUSIC CENTRES it STARTS TODAY AT 9:30 a.m:! == Tillicum Mall BURNSIDE AT TILLICUM Monday, Tuesday & Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday & Friday 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Sunday noon til 5:00 p.m. Prices in efffect while quantities last or until Sunday, July 15, 1990 unless otherwise SS community. Established on the southern shore of oneof B.C.’s greatest northern rivers (not far from present-day Prince Rupert), Es- sington was typical of the towns spawned by the province's sal- mon fishery and canning in- dustry in the 19th century: it grew, thrived, died and vanished. Skeena EB. A. Harris B.A. Harris was one of the children born in Essington and his history of this town that was obliterated by fire some three decades ago reflects the author’s close association with his birthplace. While this apparently inspired Harris to go to incredible’ re- search lengths (in effect recreat- ing Port Essington), the detail may be too extensive (and ex- haustive) regardless of the fas- cination ghost towns hold for most readers. I certainly found my earlier enthusiasm for the subject waning when only one- quarter of the way through. But the thing that struck me as most curious was that, after doing the thorough job of re- search he did, Harris neglected to add an index to Spokeshute, greatly limiting the book’s value as a historical tool. Et + River Memory 40 Years On The Yukon Telegraph, too, hasits shortcom- f mes but is still spellbinding stuff. __Author Guy Lawrence came to, Canada from England at age 17 with his father in 1898 as part of the great Klondike gold rush. Their experiences over the next two years as they wearily dragged two tons of supplies — (often by backpack) up ice- choked rivers, across 3s treacherous muskeg and over a __ seemingly endless expanse ofice _ and snow constitute hardships mn almost unimaginable today. : When Lawrence senior| , returned home after roughly a:? yearin the Yukon, his son stayed 5 and eventually embarked on a — four-decade career as a j telegraph operator stationed aie a variety of isolated posts. 40 Years On The Yukon [ Telegraph (Carryall/Sandhill: 122 pp.; $12.95) describes those years: the incredible loneliness, strange friendships, sudden = deaths and Lawrence’s witness | of the transition of British | Columbia from a raw, untamed land to one peopled by hardy prospectors, homesteaders and optimistic entrepreneurs. But... I This is a new edition of the book published by Mitchell Press in 1965 and exhibits weaknesses which can only partly be attributed to that ear- lier title. While the Mitchell ver-- sion should have been edited into a better product (the material was there for a longer and better-done book), Carryall’s edition isn’t what it might be either. When did Lawrence die and where? What were the cir- cumstances surrounding his memoirs? Did he marry? What about his family in England - did anyone think to track them down in search of photographs or correspondence? 40 Years . . . isn’t the book it could have been and arguably should have been but what is 4 there is a tantalizing glimpse of. B.C.’s history.