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CEKPA: A Memoir In Beaded Essays by Leah Altman

$20.00

Born Baby Girl Black Feather, Leah Altman was removed from her tribal community through placement by the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), to be adopted and raised by a family in Portland, Oregon. At twenty-one, she journeys across the West twice to rediscover her roots—to her birth father’s Lakota family in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and to her mother’s Persian relatives in Denver, Colorado.

As an adoptee, Leah felt the hole in her heart where her cekpa was missing. Lacking this tradition so essential to Lakota culture manifested in a troubled youth of reckless decisions, substance abuse, and struggling to fit in at school after school. A child without a cekpa is left unanchored, and without hers, Leah was at a loss in life. In an intimate portrayal of self-discovery, Leah’s memoir tells a painstaking construction of her search for identity, written to ensure her own children grow up with an understanding of their roots.

In this collection of personal essays dedicated to her two daughters, Altman masterfully weaves together her own literary cekpa in a coming-of-age story about transracial adoption, tribal enrollment, motherhood, and what it truly means to be connected to one’s culture, homeland, and family.

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A Family, Maybe By Lane Igoudin

$20.00

ByLane Igoudin

In his candid and emotional memoir, Lane Igoudin shows the human side of public adoption as he and his partner Jonathan seek to adopt their foster daughters from the Los Angeles County child welfare system. Desperately wanting to be fathers, they enter into a complicated legal process that soon becomes a tangle of drama-filled birth parent visits and children’s court hearings. Lane and Jon spend years not knowing whether they will be able to officially adopt the girls, or if the county will reunite the sisters with their birth mother, Jenna, a teenager in the state’s custody herself.

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50 Hikes in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests By Sierra Club Oregon Chapter

$20.00

BySierra Club Oregon Chapter

“Less known to Oregon hikers, the deep woods of the Tillamook State Forest are a mystery no longer. Close to Portland, but uncrowded and easy to access, these 50 hikes lead to explorations of meadows, creeks, swimming holes, and peaks in an iconic Oregon ecosystem, the temperate rainforest.” —Laura O. Foster, author of Columbia Gorge Getaways: 12 Weekend Adventures from Towns to Trails

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Dreams of the West By Portland State University & Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association

$19.95

Who were the pioneers of the American West? Some of them we already know: European Americans who traveled across North America on horseback, in covered wagons or on foot, or sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Lesser known are the immigrants who, by the 1850s, began sailing east from Southern China, primarily from the Guangdong Province. They arrived in the western American port towns in California, Oregon, and Washington. These Chinese immigrants, fleeing the hardships of their homeland, sought the same prosperity as all immigrants to America. While some Chinese immigrants found riches in Oregon’s high deserts, gold-mined mountains, coastal fisheries, and bustling Portland metropolis, many faced extreme racism, legal discrimination, and exploitation.

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Echoes Of The Lost: A Mystery

$19.00

ByCindy Brown

One retired detective. One frightened boy. One daring librarian. The case that will unravel everything. A tense, emotional mystery perfect for fans of Michael Connelly and Liz Moore.

He usually had something to go on: a body, a name, a weapon . . . What did he have now?

Retired detective Ster McCaffrey has lived in isolation since the death of his beloved wife. Recently disabled from a traumatic brain injury, his quiet life is interrupted when he wakes in the dead of night to find a child sobbing on his doorstep—leaving him with more questions than answers.

After learning that the boy and his missing mother are unhoused with no official investigation underway, Ster decides to solve the mystery himself. To do so, he’ll need to interview a community whose voice is rarely heard: the houseless of Portland, Oregon. Diving deeper into their tight-knit circle, Ster realizes trust is hard-won, and answers even more so. The further he goes, the more difficult it is to tell where the case ends, and his past begins.

With threats to his home, new evidence found in the river, and signs pointing to murder—friends and enemies are closer than Ster realizes. Only one thing is clear: the boy is in grave danger.

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Alive at the Center By Bonnie Nish, Chris Gilpin, Cody Walker, David D. Horowitz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Jesse Lichenstein, Kathleen Flenniken, Leah Stenson, Rob Taylor, Robin Susanto, Susan Denning and Susan McCaslin

$18.95

ByBonnie Nish, Chris Gilpin, David D. Horowitz, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Jesse Lichenstein, Leah Stenson, Rob Taylor, Robin Susanto, Susan Denning, Susan McCaslin

The Pacific Poetry Project’s first volume, Alive at the Center, aims to capture the thriving poetic atmosphere of the Pacific Northwest. It concentrates on the three major cities that define it—Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver B.C. This anthology, compiled and edited by an outstanding poet from each city, is a cultural conversation among the unique urban communities whose perspectives share more than just a common landscape. Alive at the Center features distinctive, contemporary poets who speak to the individual spirits of these Pacific Northwest cities.

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