The Sorrow of Archaeology

Sarah MacLeish can't maintain her medical practice. She is a Multiple Scleroses victim, no longer able to use her hands in diagnosis. She is also the main character in Russell Martin's novel, `The Sorrow of Archaeology,' recently released by the University of New Mexico Press. The story is set in Southern Colorado, and drawn from several of the author's interests, including archaeology, medicine, and disability, particularly Multiple Scleroses. For him, these topics become metaphors for our constant struggle to sort out our lives. Knowing she may eventually use a wheel chair, and terrified of the idea, Sarah determines to be normal as long as possible, before she must give into her disease. She becomes a member of an archaeology dig team her husband, Harry, is supervising at an ancient pueblo site in a canyon near Cortez, Colorado. An MS attack does put Sarah in a wheelchair, for a short time. As she begins to recover her mobility, a beloved family member faces her own mortal illness, and makes a choice Sarah does not realize she is still capable of making. The resulting catharsis leads Sarah to discoveries and decisions concerning her life and illness. `The Sorrow of Archaeology' comes to a powerful, and satisfying conclusion. To give Sarah the full range of emotions she needs as she struggles with her issues, Russell Martin constructed her story in a series of short chapters. The book draws its title from one of these, in which Sarah laments the fact that archaeologists must try to learn about peoples' lives from fragmented evidence. Harry points out that everyone else must do the same from bits and pieces of experiences, during his or her time on earth. Flashbacks written in the past tense, interweave with current details, stated in the present. Martin also lets Sarah narrate the novel in the first person. Throughout `The Sorrow of Archaeology,' Russell Martin uses simple and direct language that never becomes simplistic. Readers looking for an action-packed Indiana Jones archaeology tale will not find it. Instead, they'll discover a story in a real place about real people. As the action gently unfolds, Martin presents the universal emotions that connect readers to characters.

Martin's characters take the reader into small town life in Cortez, where their destinies wind and unwind. The story steps carefully from past to present, revealing Sarah's own sense of being buried, just like the Anasazi girl whose skeleton she has found in the ruins. Her road trip with Tom John is the best part of the book, the archetypal journey to self. Sarah's sorrow (MS), her husband's sorrow (his affair), Tom John's sorrow (he's getting up there in years), Oma's sorrow (not being able to stay in her home), Sarah's family's sorrow all reflect off each other like sparkling shards of some shattered mirror. Everybody has to be somewhere, and as a reader, I'm glad the characters of this story are here in my neck of the woods--the Four Corners, Mancos, Cortez, Lewis-Arriola.