A woman with a piano, a dog, and not much else ferries into a tiny Southeast Alaskan village. The townspeople \u2014 a grumpy, shouting philosopher in a wheelchair; a burly, jobless, fix-it-all man; a teenage would-be bear guide with a secret girlfriend \u2014 watch the woman arrive and help her haul her piano onto the porch of her cabin.<\/p>\n
Then Axel, a local businessman, decides to dam a salmon stream and cage a wild bear for a tourist attraction, and the woman with the piano, and her new friends, have to decide what they\u2019ll do about it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the premise of \u201cPiano Tide,\u201d environmental ethicist and writer Kathleen Dean Moore\u2019s first book of fiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a long time I\u2019ve been writing books and speeches and harangues about stopping climate change and extinctions, and it\u2019s all been very abstract, and I\u2019ve been saying really abstract things like \u2018stand strong against the corporate plunder of the planet,\u2019\u201d Moore said. \u201cAnd it seemed to me I really needed to know what that meant. How do people do that? How do they make the plans? What does it cost them? What regrets will they have?\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore, until recently a professor of environmental ethics at Oregon State University, spends her summers on Chichagof Island in Southeast Alaska (her author bio says she \u201cwrites from a small cabin where two creeks and a bear trail meet a tidal cove\u201d).<\/p>\n
She first came to Southeast Alaska as a writer in residence at the Island Institute in Sitka in 2006. She worked on \u201cPiano Tide\u201d for 8-10 years, she estimates.<\/p>\n
Initially, each of her characters represented a different theory of environmental ethics. Axel, for instance, represented the anthropocentric point of view, she said.<\/p>\n
(An anthropocentric view is one that \u201cregards humankind as the central or most important element of existence, especially as opposed to God or animals,\u201d according to an online definition.)<\/p>\n
But \u201cas soon as I started to get these characters fleshed out, they refused to be pigeonholed,\u201d Moore said. \u201cI wanted all my characters to be complex that always, they were trying to do the right thing\u2026. I spent years and years making these people into people the readers would care about, until I couldn\u2019t write about them without laughing and crying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore said the point she considers most important is that \u201cthere has to be a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that we can\u2019t cut trees, but we can do that honorably,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that we can\u2019t fish, but we can\u2019t fish out the breeds. We need to find a way towards a sustainable, honorable harvest, which is entirely possible if we start questioning our presupposition about who deserves what.\u201d<\/p>\n
Home is a central theme in the narrative, as is the consequence of taking action, and music itself. There\u2019s a beautiful passage in which Moore draws parallels between the tuning of a piano and the environment.<\/p>\n
Much of Moore\u2019s knowledge about music is due to her friend Rachelle McCabe, a concert pianist, Moore said. The two have been touring together on a program about extinction.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has taught me so much about music,\u201d Moore said. \u201cIt\u2019s been thrilling for me\u2026 I see things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
The art on the cover is by Juneau painter Dick Zagars.<\/p>\n
Also, \u201cBecause there\u2019s so much music in the book, I\u2019ve been trying to bring a musician to the stage\u201d when she reads, Moore said.<\/p>\n
She\u2019ll be reading in Juneau at Hearthside Bookstore in the Nugget Mall at 6 p.m.. Juneau musician Linda Buckley will perform with her. Monday, Feb. 6 at 7 p.m., she’ll be reading with musician Libby Roderick in Anchorage at 49th State Brewing Co., Barrell Room East, 717 W. 3rd Ave., sponsored by 49 Writers. The event is free for 49 Writers members; there’s a $5 donation suggested for attendees who are not members. There’s a cash bar, and doors open at 6:30 p.m. Other reading locations haven\u2019t yet been decided.<\/p>\n
Some of Moore\u2019s books are \u201cRiverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water,\u201d \u201cHoldfast: At Home in the Natural World;: \u201cThe Pine Island Paradox,\u201d \u201cWild Comfort,\u201d and \u201cGreat Tide Rising.\u201d She\u2019s won the Pacific Northwest Book Award, Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction.<\/p>\n
Moore is now working on the sequel to \u201cPiano Tide.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t think I would,\u201d she said. \u201cThe characters just walked into my life laughing, so what can you do then?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly managing editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A woman with a piano, a dog, and not much else ferries into a tiny Southeast Alaskan village. The townspeople \u2014 a grumpy, shouting philosopher in a wheelchair; a burly, jobless, fix-it-all man; a teenage would-be bear guide<\/a> with a secret girlfriend \u2014 watch the woman arrive and help her haul her piano onto the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19416"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}