Mountain City

I was very touched by the story of the people in Mountain City. I enjoy books about real people, whom from the outside seem as if there is no story but from the inside have warmth and wisdom. How many towns have you driven through and thought ," who lives here, what do they do?" Well now we know. Greg Martin wrote an excellent book and it should be must reading for all people interested in the real heartland of this country.

I was fortunate to hear Greg Martin give a reading from this book. Reading this book from end to end I heard the echo of his voice, the caring for his family, the strong feeling of place and anchoring he gets from Mountain City. Driving by, I have often wondered what it must be like to live in some of the small, lonely, almost-empty towns that aren't too hard to find in the West. I wonder where the people came from-and went to, and what happened, and this book gives me a glimpse into one such place. The smallness and sparseness aside, there's more history and depth than I would have thought driving by it. I'll look more carefully at other small places now.

Thomas McGuane says that "...all literature is about loss, or the recognition of loss..." and Gregory Martin's debute memoir certainly shows this to be true.In Mountain City, Martin writes poignantly about a small town and a huge loss, about a place in rural northeastern Nevada, its people and their way of life--all leaning toward extinction. "Thirty-three people live in Mountain City," he says. "I come and go, but when I'm here that makes thirty-four." The community of ranchers, Native Americans, widows, and Martin's relatives, who are descendants of the original Basque settlers of the area, is already mostly abandoned to the past. There are no young families; one one, in fact, under forty."I sweep the floors," Martin writes, providing us with his intimate perspective as he helps out at his Uncle Mel's store. Martin is always in the background, always observing. He lets us see the salient details, without judgment, without pity. From the hub of Tremewan's general store, an anachronism not unlike the town itself, he shows us the slow erosion: a circle of widows who won't allow any other woman to join them until her husband is dead; a grandfather who no longer recognizes life-long friends due to his failing eyesight; an Owyhee Indian who lives from one government check to the next and on many bottles of wine in between.By the end of the book there are two fewer people in Mountain City. But by then, we've come to see all of them as survivors. We admire them for their fierce tenacity, and we appreciate that Martin has shared their spirit with us.

In the world of book publishing it seems that 2000 is the year of the memoir. There are literally hundreds of so-called memoirs being rushed to press. Most are a thinly veiled effort to cash in on the latest touchy-feely fad and will soon be piled on the growing remainder pile. A few, a precious few, are of an award-winning caliber and worth the reader's time. This is such a book. Mountain City is the story of a rural mining town in Nevada that has experienced the bust-and-boom times so typical of much of the West. It's population, once numbered in the thousands, now totals thirty-three. The town has experienced the off-told western tale of fame and fortune, good jobs and a promising future, and then the seemingly inevitable exploitation of the land and people and ultimate abandonment by those who promised the elusive pot of gold. Attrition follows soon after and the cycle begins again with every promising rumor or spoken hope by those that remain. It is a story as old as the West itself. So, what makes this book so special? Gregory Martin, unlike so many that grew up in the West, never really left Mountain City. Oh, to be sure he moved away and established a career away from this northern Nevada town that is 84 miles away from anything. However, he kept returning time and again to visit his grandparents and work in his uncle's general store. His memoir of not only the history of the town but its inhabitants is nothing short of wonderful. He has succeeded in telling the story of these descendants of Basque (Bascos) shepherds and Cornish Tin Miners; Native American Indians; and assorted others that at once introduces the reader to a small slice of contemporary western life and the history of much of the West as a whole. The reader will meet many of the 33 permanent residents. People such as Uncle Mel, the owner of Tremewan's. Tremewan's is the town general store. In fact it is the only store in town and thus the social and cultural center. This is, if you don't count the bar frequented by the four widow ladies that meet to discuss town matters and pull the levers of the slot machines. Membership is limited to those whose husbands are dead...not just gone, but dead. It is a story of growing old, watching out for each other, and hoping, always hoping, that things will improve. It is also the story of self-reliance, stubbornness, love, and the acceptance of a most difficult but rewarding experience. This is an honest, moving, touching story of a way of life that in many respects is disappearing from the West. The folks in Mountain City know it's better days are gone, probably for good. Yet a few stay and rather than become hardened where it matters most, in their soul, they maintain a stoic yet determined demeanor that values the individual while it supports the collective community. That is also a trait common to the history of the West. This is a marvelous book not only in the way it is written but also in the story it tells. For those readers inte

Gregory Martin's "Mountain City" draws us into a small Nevada community and makes us care deeply about the members of his family who live there and their Basque and Indian neighbors. Martin shows us the ties that bind these last few remaining families and instills respect for their values. No one is given to grandiloquent statements, but people look out for one another and help each other through the seasons, illnesses, tragedies, childbirth and death. Martin's prose is spare, not a word too much -- a bit like the conversational style of his relatives. The stories and fates of his protagonists are sometimes sad but never once sentimental. We know that the town of Mountain City is ultimately dying, but as long as the Tremewans and their neighbors inhabit it, it will still be full of life and an abiding sense of community, rooted in a strong shared Basque past.