"Cruzatte and Maria" is basically a replay of Bowen's earlier "Wolf, No Wolf," where the noble ranchers are pitted against the eco-ninnies, and in this book, the Yuppies who putter up and down the far reaches of the Missouri in their canoes and stinkboats. The local residents defend their rural stretch of the Missouri against all intruders, and shoot a couple of guys who were actually writing a pro-rancher, anti-ecoNazi book. This is where Harvey Weasel Fat Wallace, the Blackfeet FBI guy calls on Du Pré to find the murderer.

Another FBI guy, Ripper sums up the plot:

"These people out here have had it, basically, with the twentieth century, and who can blame them? But potting passing canoe paddlers is, and I must make this perfectly clear, like the late Tricky Dick, not going to be the protest of choice. It's illegal. It's also wrong."

Everyone leans on Du Pré in this book, including his daughter Maria. She persuades him to help a group of filmmakers (her boyfriend is the assistant director) who are shooting a documentary about the Lewis and Clark expedition. As it happens, Maria and her father are Métis descendants of the fiddler, Cruzatte who was a member of that famous 1805 expedition.

Even Du Pré's long-term mistress Madeleine gets into the act, and tricks her man into trying on glasses:

"'Du Pré,' said Madelaine, 'I think you maybe got eyes like a hawk, see things far away, up close you got eyes like a pocket gopher.'

"Du Pré grunted.

"'Put a bead on that ...needle,' said Madelaine.

"Du Pré picked up a bead, poked the needle at it, and missed.

"...'Okay, Du Pré,' said Madelaine. 'You try these on, yes.'"

Madelaine whips out a bag of dime-store reading glasses and Du Pré is made to realize that he hasn't seen her face or her beadwork in years. The dialogue in this book is up to Bowen's best standards, and I love these scenes between long-time friends. The author telegraphs just enough information to give us readers a warm, fuzzy sense of involvement.

The scenes I don't like usually take place in a bar, where the ranchers gather to literally and metaphorically bash guitar-playing, expensively-attired Yuppies, eco-Nazis, and film-makers. Too much drinking. Too much smoking. Too much high cholesterol. Too much violence. Bad for sensitive Yuppie stomachs like mine. Don't read this book if you have the flu.

Otherwise, read it. "Cruzatte and Maria" is the latest in Bowen's excellent, tough-love series of not-so-hard-to-figure-out mysteries.

Peter Bowen has been writing his tales of Gabriel Du Pre, a Metis Indian, master fiddler, detective and righter-of-wrongs extraordinaire for some time now. Du Pre, his mate, Madelaine and his many dear friends in Toussaint, Montana have acquired a loyal following during that time. Bowen's new book, "Cruzatte and Maria" is his finest yet, and will greatly please all readers, new and old.

When Du Pre's old friend in the FBI, Harvey Wallace, asks him to look into a series of disappearances in the White Cliffs area of the Missouri River Gabriel is troubled and refuses to become involved. Residents of that area, mostly ranchers, have been under continuous attack by environmentalists and encroachment by yuppie wilderness seekers. Du Pre understands the ranchers' struggle and senses an underlying, irresolvable tragedy.

Unfortunately, Du Pre's is unable to maintain his distance. His daughter Maria has returned to Toussaint with her boyfriend to help with the making of a television special on the Lewis and Clark voyage. Maria is descended on both sides from the four Metis Indians that accompanied the adventurers and Gabriel is dragged into the production as a consultant and advisor. Naturally, the movie is to be filmed on the banks of the Missouri, in the same location as the disappearances. Gabriel smells a set up, but concedes gracefully (actually he curses a lot) and undertakes both missions. As the story progresses Du Pre's worst fears and greatest hopes are realized. Metis life and history, politics, Hollywood and the rancher's struggle for recognition and independence mix together in a heady, sometimes disquieting, stew.

Bowen is an absolute wizard with characters. Not only Du Pre, but many other characters come brilliantly to life, even in the short space of this novel. Bart, Du Pre's billionaire friend and Benetsee, the mad/wise holy man who drives Du Pre crazy with riddles stand out. A new and special character is Pallas, one of Du Pre's eleven grandchildren. She will totally charm the reader with her seven-going-on-thirty attitude and her sharp, accurate tongue. The ranchers, members of the movie company and countless bit players are all unforgettably painted.

Perhaps the best thing about Bowen's writing is his insight into the Metis Indians. They are a tribe mostly forgotten to American and Canadian history, who played a great part in the fur trade in Canada and Montana. As a multi-tribal mixture of indigenous, French and Scottish blood they have had great difficulty gaining recognition as an independent culture. The are strong folk, with a rich musical tradition and an indomitable spirit. Bowen's Metis are people of great character, wry, fun loving, and deeply respectful of their people, their friends and the land they live on. Bowen captures their language and dry sarcastic wit perfectly. The reader will leave "Cruzatte and Maria" delighted to have spent time with these remarkable people.

Du Pre's daughter Maria comes home from school with her boyfriend Ben who is the assistant director on the movie being made on Lewis & Clark. Maria asks Du Pre to be the historical consultant on the set and Du Pre reluctantly agrees. Harvey Weasel Fat asks Du Pre to check into the disappearances of several people at the White Cliffs area of the Missouri River. These two tasks come together and make for murder.

The local residents don't like newcomers and somebody is making sure that strangers don't stay. Two environmental journalists are found in the river and it doesn't look like it was an accident. Du Pre must find out who is doing the killing before anybody else gets hurt.

Peter Bowen does an excellent job bringing out the local customs and mannerisms of the Metis people. Du Pre is an offbeat but thoroughly engaging sleuth. Makes you maybe want visit for a while.

This book is great! Very hard to put it down. Lowry has made some really great books, but this one is the best! This is a 10 star book!

this book is a fabulous tool for teaching students about theattempt to perfect society, to take out the human factor fromrelationships. I find the ending, which leaves it up to the reader to decide what happens to Jonas and Gabriel to be an invaluable way to engage students in the critical thinking process. When my students are finished with this book they are drained emotionally. So am I. Ms. Lowry has written a modern classic that is for all ages, not just children.

This book is so mysterious. It brings out a different you. the ending is confusing. you have to ask a librarian or teacher about the ening to know the TRUE ENDING

Éste libro nos aporta nuevas perspectivas del P. Emiliano Tardif. Lo hemos conocido anunciando el Evangelio, sin miedo, sin complejos, sin descansos, con confianza, con la certeza de que JESÚS ESTÁ VIVO y quiere dar vida y rescatar al hombre. Ahora podemos conocer lo que piensan de él sus familiares, sus superiores y las personas que han convivido diariamente con él.

Proporciona un amplio "álbum de fotos" alrededor de 100; enseñanzas del P. Emiliano, anécdotas de los innumerables viajes, testimonios de múltiples curaciones y la acción del Dios Vivo.

Es un libro que invita a la esperanza, a la alegría, ensancha el corazón pues nos recuerda que Dios no se quedó sin fuerzas, hoy sigue vivo y quiere transmitir vida a todos.

Está escrito desde el cariño a la persona del P. Tardif, con la intención de perpetuar su memoria, pero sobre todo con el deseo de avivar, no olvidar, las obras de Dios; de continuar el camino emprendido por el P. Emiliano y sus colaboradores, promover la evangelización y las casas de espiritualidad extendidas por los cinco continentes.

Tuve el privilegio de participar a encuentros del Padre Tardif, y fui testigo de varias sanaciones que ocurieron en estos encuentros, incluyendo a mi esposa que fué sanada de epilepsia.

Pero lo más importante con el Padre Emiliano Tardif no son tantas las sanaciones pero la fuerza del mensaje evangélico: a saber que Jesús esta siempre vivo.

El libro de María Sangiovanni es el mejor libro para recordar o aprender a conocer la obra de evangelización del Padre Tardif. Un libro que van a léer más de una vez! y que puede reanimar su fé y su vida.

Jean-Pierre Demets

Haber leído este libro ha sido una gran bendición para mí por que pude conocer más al P. Emiliano. Hay muchos hechos de su vida que la autora refiere y que yo no los conocía y que me han hecho admirarlo más como lo que el fué: Un Hombre de Dios.

This journal is great. I have tried and tried to keep a journal, but I can never keep one going, you know I'll do it for a few weeks or months, then I get tired of it and stop...It always seems to get boring or somehthing. Well, this journal has been completely different. I hav been doing it for quite a while, and not gotten bored. It keeps you interested with little words on each page, like little insights and stuff, I love the way it's bound like a book on the side and not like a spiral notebook, and it's very girly with its pretty pink...the outside look is very attractive and cute and really caught my eye, I actually bought mine at Border's bookstore, and I was looking at the journals I saw this one, flipped through andd went straight over to buy it. Simplyshe did a great job with this one. This cute little book even fits in my purse! I love it, and it really was a great purchase for me. Studies even show that keeping a diary or journal can increase your social life, and keep you from being depressed. This is a great journal and I highly recommend it.

I have several of the SimplyShe products, and I believe all women should have at least one. The journal is salted with small uplifting witty remarks (e.g. "You are hipper than you think".) No matter your age or relationship status this is a good journal. It's easy to write in and can even fit in your purse. Perfect for grrl power.

This girly journal is perfect. Of course, it is a journal, but it's like a little mini-support group for the journal's writer. It's colorful and cute, which makes it a joy to write in. But then each page has little captions (that speak only to women) like "I'm bloated. How bout you." or "You're so hot. There, now do you feel better." and (my personal favorite) "You're not alone. I don't like your boyfriend, either."
The purpose of most journals is to allow the writer to vent... about whatever. And believe it or not, this journal makes you feel comfortable about complaining about everything... even issues you feel absolutely alone on. And more importantly, it makes you laugh at times when you really need it.

Great book! Not only the pictures are beautiful, but the recipes are relatively easy to prepare and authentic, and all have a manageable, realistic list of ingredients.

Not only it's so beautiful and makes you want to try and prepare everything, it is also very accurate in its instructions. I didn't fail in any of the recipes I tried. Worthy evry $ you put to buy it.

Great recipies and pictures. This is the greatest french cuisine book I've seen.

I am Ecuadorian ( Quito ) and I have heard some of versions of this history, even by the most prominent Ecuadorian newspaper, but nothing compares as the certanty of Mr. John Treherne, book.
This book gives you an oportunity as break, you Imagine Global crisis of 1929, Nazi Germany, lots of pain and hatred everywhere
but at the end, love make a miracle in real life again.
By other hand, if you have heard of a place on earth where: is a treassured by nature and "fauna", yes that is Galapagos Island where you can find: amazing nature ( mountains and sea ), and sea lions swiming trought your legs, yes that is Galapos At Ecuador!! Mi pais!!

No fiction writer would dare to invent such a story. It's too implausible for a reader of mysteries to believe. However, it's a true story about several odd groups of people who went to live on an island. The story sweeps you along, building to a still unsolved murder or murders. Part of the fun is coming up with your own explanation for what happened. Someone was lying, but who? It's also interesting to find out who of the settlers actually stayed and founded a colony more or less by accident. All in all, a good book to curl up with on a cold winter night by the fire.

This is one book that needs, desparately, to be reprinted. It is the most amazing story and quite ably presented by the author. It is the true story of the inhabitants of Floreana, or Charles Island as it was also known in the late 1920's early 1930's. This tiny little island in the Galapagos group, off the coast of Equador was home to a small community of idealists who shifted there to start a new life - and it also became the centre of an odd and unsolved mystery.

The start of the book was not entirely satisfactory. If I hadn't been encouraged to continue then I might not have persisted in reading it. The book centres around two German idealists (Dore and Frecerich), who escape from unhappy marriages and make an 'ideal' home on the island where they can live close to the earth and philosophise. Later another German couple and their child (the Wittmers) settle in another part of Floreana. This first half of the book which is their life is interesting but not compelling. It is when the Baroness, a sort of mystic with Imperial intentions, settles on the island with her small entourage of devoted male followers, that things get interesting. From about half way through the book you can see that things on the island are deteriorating towards some kind of disaster. The Baroness seems to be deliberately provoking the others. Food is being stolen, mail tampered with and the Baroness's imperial intentions start to overwhelm them all.

The relationships on the island and the final mystery are unravelled by Traherne through thorough reading of books and resources from the various characters involved or who had visited the island. Treherne seems to have done a pretty good job in unravelling the tangle web of concealments about just what might have happened on the island during the drought in the summer of 1934 and it makes wonderful reading.

To even reveal the mystery would be to spoil the book as it becomes quite complex with other deaths involved as well. This is very well worth reading - kind of Lord of the Flies for adults and - as with all true stories - the truth is far stranger than fiction.

I really enjoyed this book. Its an interesting read about the effect of WWII on world fashion and also a helpful resorce guide to fashion and trends of the era. I must for any vintage clothing collector or swing kid!

I borrowed this book along with the other volumes (1940 to 1970 )from my library. This was exactly what I need for my assignment of different body types and the power of non verbal communication. It was very interesting and would recommend buying. This book was outstanding!

I thought this book was well written, even if it is supposedly for kids. It was full of information, pictures, and interesting trivia. As a free-lance writer and researcher of the Twenties, it's a good book to have in one's personal library!

What happens to the loved ones of mountaineers who perish while seeking to climb higher peaks or pioneer new routes on challenging mountains? The author attempts to answer this question with her well written and deeply personal account.

The author was intimately involved in the mountaineering world of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties. At the time she was in the throes of an intense love affair with Joe Trasker, the British climber who perished in 1982 with his regular climbing partner, Peter Boardman, while attempting to climb the then unclimbed Northeast ridge of Everest.

The author offers an intriguing, birdseye view into the tight circle of the mountaineering elite through her relationship with Joe Trasker. The book, however, is not about climbing, per se. It is more of a personal catharsis of her relationship with Joe Trasker.

Still, this makes for an interesting read. The book is divided into two parts. The first concerns itself with the Joe that was living. The second part concerns itself with the Joe that had perished.

The first part chronicles their relationship, which was intense. It also seemed to be a little one sided. The author makes it fairly clear to the reader that Joe Trasker did not seem to have the same commitment to the relationship that the author seems to have had. Her reluctance to let the relationship go appears to have been based more upon what the relationship could have been, rather than upon what it actually was. As they say, love is blind.

The second part of the book chronicles her coming to terms with his death. She does this by joining up with Peter Boardman's widow, Hilary, and setting off on a journey to Tibet and, ultimately, to Everest in an attempt to connect to Joe one final time, as well as to seek closure to a part of her life that was no more.

Sensitively written and finely drawn, her pain is palpable and her story moving. It is, above all, a fitting tribute to Joe Trasker, the man who inspired such devotion.

Lost Love
Fragile Edge: A Personal Portrait of Loss on Everest
Reviewed by Laura Drury

One rainy day, I curled up on the couch with a steaming cup of coffee and Maria Coffey's book, Fragile Edge, intending to spend a couple of pleasurable hours reading. As it happened, I did not stop after a couple of hours. I read the whole book that day.

From the beginning I knew that Joe Tasker, her lover and well-known British mountain-climber, had died in a climbing accident on Everest and that this had affected her deeply. Even though I knew the end of the story, Maria's conversational style of storytelling kept me glued to my seat. It was as if she were sitting in my living room, telling me all the details of her lost love.

Even so, Coffey's book is not a tragedy. It's a vicarious peek into a life of thrilling uneasiness, alternating with periods of intense passion. It is the story of how one woman coped with the strain of "the unseen menace, dormant but stirring." Maria described herself as "a climber's girlfriend, left at home, watching for mail". The many farewells were difficult for her. "There was always that wrenching in the gut when he walked away and three months of uncertainty stretched ahead like a tunnel with no light at the end." But when he returned from his dangerous expeditions, remembers Coffey, "there would be a resurgence of feeling between us, an excitement as fresh and keen as when we were first together".

This is also the story of Maria Coffey's and Hilary Rhodes' (Boardman's wife) month long trip to the advance base camp of their loved ones' last climb. They did it to find closure and say goodbye as they left mementos at a memorial cairn that had been erected for the two lost climbers. They planted a little garden of edelweiss and mosses. They mourned and grieved, then laughed and sang with their Chinese hosts. They came to terms with their loss and made peace with Everest. They decided that regretting was of no use.

Fragile Edge gives the average person insight into the world of serious mountaineering. "I was in love with a man who courted death, whose life made more sense to him if he pushed its limits," observed Coffey. In Joe Tasker's own words, "I sometimes wonder why I can't be content with Sunday rock climbs." The fatality rate among high-altitude mountaineers is supposedly one in ten. It is a world that most of us observe from the safety of our less-than-dangerous lives.

The most rewarding aspect in reading this book was the insight into what it is like to bethe partner of someone with such a single minded focus that it surpasses everything. I am that person, and it made me think twice!

It doesn't matter which one reads it first as long as you both read it!

"GIs and Frauleins" presents a comprehensive review of the cultural and economic impact the massive American military machine imposed on a small, agrarian, and relatively poor German state at the peak of the Cold War. This book presents a seminal work for the comprehension of later cultural clashes that dominated both the United States and Germany and continue to the present.

I recommend it for both the serious scholar as well as the casual reader of social and demographic history.

Unlike the previous reviewer, who took issue with the allegedly "academic" style of the book, I found it was very readable, avoiding a lot of the "constructing the other" and "conflicting gender identities" type of language one might expect to find in an academic book of this sort. This does not mean, however, that the book does not address the kind of conceptual, academic issues that are frequently raised in such stilted terms. In no sense is the book merely an antiquarian show-and-tell kind of catalog; it quite thoroughly discusses the "holy Trinity" of race, class, and gender issues. I found the discussion of German and American forms of racism to be especially interesting.

The content of the book has, for the most part, been adequately addressed in the "official" Amazon review as well as in the previous customer review. There is one aspect, however, that deserves further mention, and which I found particularly insightful: Höhn's discussion of whether the changes that came to the rural areas she discusses would be best described as modernization or as Americanization. This sort of issue is something which would interest anyone who is concerned with the cultural issues of globalization and the dominance of American cultural products in today's markets. Because she focuses on an area in which there was a very strong American presence in the immediate post-war years, it is not surprising that her evidence shows a significant American component to the modernization process. It would be interesting to compare her conclusions in this regard to those of someone studying an area where American influence was less direct and personal. This comparison would better demonstrate whether the American influence was a necessary, or merely a contemporary, component of German societal modernization. Such a comparison, however, would not fit very well into a book titled "GIs and Fräuleins." Höhn is to be commended for putting the abundant evidence which she presents into such a larger context of modernization debates, and not faulted for not being more encyclopedic.

This book is a truely fascinating study of German-American encounters after World War II. It is full of interesting details and also extremely well written. A MUST for anyone interested in German history!

Ms Mercati gives the reader a good overview of this style of massage. One problem many books on Eastern medicine concepts is that the scientific paradigm of qi, yin-yang, etc is difficult to grasp for someone who has been educated on Western scientific principles. This book starts with an introduction to the Eastern principles in a more understandable, concise fashion. This makes it good for a massage therapist who wants to expand his repertoire. At times, the anatomical descriptions are inaccurate eg: referring to the malleolus as an "ankle bone"; however, the informal style of the book keeps it interesting and readable, as well as informative.

I am a massage therapist and found this book to be very helpful as reference for the non-western portion of the National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. It had lots of information on meridians and the five element theory. It was also written quite clear and was quite easy to clear. I also used the followng which is also on amazon:
The Ultimate Study Guide for the National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork: Key Review Questions and Answers by Patrick Leonardi (Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3).
The last 3 books were right on target with the type of informatioin ask on this national test. All 4 books are must buys.

I loved the different techniques in this book. It teaches the the law of the five elements and it presents detailed diagrams of the meridian channels.