Pickets and Dead Men, by Bree Loewen

Reviewed by Laura V. Bonner

Readers who purchase Pickets and Deadmen in search of riveting mountain rescues and corpse retrievals will be bound to the pages for something even more gripping:  a painfully honest examination of the writer’s incredible personal passage as a ranger. Competing not just for her place among men, but for the hero in herself,  Bree Loewen risks her life daily with the reward of sleeping in her car, frostbite, scant nourishment, and living in general poverty. Loewen, due to her gender, combats the disapproval of not just Mount Rainier’s park service supervisors, but often climbers she rescues as well. Her shortcomings haunt her as she pushes herself past the norms of physical and emotional endurance in order to gain a respected foothold as a park service ranger. While she ultimately chooses a path that returns her sense of serenity, the three seasons on Rainier’s treacherous slopes have left their mark on her soul.

Loewen writes with simple grace in a language that attracts a broad range of reader ability, but her true accomplishment is her ability to seize the reader’s attention with the shock of events. Not only could I not rest from reading Pickets and Dead Men, but I could not stop thinking about it for days after completing the book. This is not a predictable tale of a repressed individual who overcomes, which is what some may hope when learning that the book captures the spirit of a woman rising in a man’s domain. Instead, Louwen’s tortured soul-searching keeps the pages turning. There are shining moments. There are lost children returned to distraught parents, there are climbers who summit and return to base camp safely, but there is something else—the bittersweetness of outliving other climbers, the accomplishment of surviving sub-zero temperatures, and the realization of not wanting to die on a mountain. Louwen’s modesty may prevent her from boasting, but readers will surely recognize that she has accomplished much not just as a ranger, but as a writer, too.

Pickets and Dead Men ($16.95) is Bree Loewen’s first book. Learn more about the book at www.mountaineersbooks.org , or calling 1.800.553.4453.