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Rating: 
Summary: Learning While a Caregiver.
Review: Ever wondered what you would do if you were the caregiver to an elderly relative? Mary Blew finds herself pressed into caregiving when her Aunt Imogene calls and says that she is going to move from Port Angeles, Washington to Lewistown, ID to be near Mary. Mary has no idea why her aunt would want to leave her beautiful view of the ocean and surrounding area and questions her. Since their family has tacitly agreed never to speak about what is important, her aunt ambiguously replies that it is because one day she "forgot how to make oatmeal." Blew is confused since Aunt Imogene, whose independence she has long admired, was the steadying rock in her life that offered her support during her two divorces. Quickly we realize that that Aunt Imogene is suffering from mental lapses that rapidly progress to "dementia" where she flickers arbitrarily between reality and her own world. Dealing with an independent aunt who is struggling to control her life is compounded by Blew's estranged daughter divorcing her husband and moving near her mother. As Blew works to rebuild a relationship with the daughter who she had treated with great reserve, she is forced to revisit her divorces, her treatment of her daughter, and her expectations for life. Then Mary Blew finds and reads her aunt's diaries. Aunt Imogene has never married, and Mary searches the diaries to discover why. Carefully reading between the lines, she finds surprising revelations not only about her aunt but also about her parents and grandparents, thereby overlaying and entwining the lives of four generations. This gives the memoir a fragmented narrative associatively entwining the life of the narrator, her daughter, her aunt, and their ancestors. Refusing to keep her family's code of silence about important things, Blew shares her findings with her daughter. What she finds are dysfunctional marriages that compel females in her family to strive for personal freedom, females who are unwilling to speak about what really matters, and women with an ability to suppress large parts of their lives. Aunt Imogene has paid dearly for her freedom in Port Angles; however, as she loses her grasp with the world, Mary Blew slowly receives a firmer grasp on her own world. Recognizing destructive familial patterns in herself, Blew intimates that her journey of self-discovery was successful as she takes small steps to spring loose "unacceptable" ideas that she has suppressed.
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Summary: Balsamroot is a moving, beautiful family memoir
Review: I loved this book and recommend it to any lover of memoir. Mary Clearman Blew renders a heartfelt story about uncovering the mysteries of her Aunt Imogene's life, and in turn, embarking on self-discovery. I suggest first reading "All But the Waltz," which puts Balsamroot in a rich context of family history. It is also a wonderful narrative on its own.
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Summary: The Parts Don't Quite Make a Whole
Review: This is a book about a dearly loved aunt's slide into dementia, a book about a tentative reconciliation between mother and daughter, a book about a Montana childhood remembered, and a book about an earlier Montana imaginatively reconstructed from the aunt's fifty years of laconic daily diaries. Just when I would settle into one book, swallowing Blew's often self-pitying tone, wham, off we would go into another book. She is trying for a quilt of a book and leaves us with pieces. But these pieces are often of very good writing indeed, especially the fond anecdotes of the generations of horses which worked the family property. As you read, remember the family motto --"Never speak aloud of what you feel deeply." As often as I was engrossed in what is in this book, I wondered what deliberately is kept out and how other voices -- the daughter and the aunt -- might tell this story.
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