cover image Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest

Wildmen, Wobblies & Whistle Punks: Stewart Holbrook's Lowbrow Northwest

Stewart Hall Holbrook. Oregon State University Press, $0 (313pp) ISBN 978-0-87071-367-5

A popular regional writer of the Pacific Northwest who fell into obscurity after his death, Holbrook (1893-1964) gets a lively repackaging of his work in this collection of 26 pieces drawn from his journalism and his books. Holbrook went west from his native Vermont in 1920 and worked in logging camps before discovering his vocation as a writer. His first book, Holy Old Mackinaw , published in 1938 (and still in print), made his name. Known as ``the Lumberjack Boswell,'' he specialized in entertaining histories of offbeat characters, such as the profiles included here of Prophet Joshua the Second (and his harem) from the Church of the Brides of Christ, the tough logging camp signal boys known as whistle punks, and labor union diehard Arthur Boose of the Industrial Workers of the World, popularly known as ``the Wobblies.'' Eschewing deep messages or provocative thought, Holbrook at his best is a supreme storyteller, taking old tales like ``The Great Homestead Murders'' and shaping them into mesmerizing reads. Booth, whose first book this is, is founder and chair of the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts. Photos not seen by PW . ( Sept. )