Debra gwartney biography

Every memoir I love and admire does the same essential work—examining the interior of the person called ‘I’ with one central aim: increased self-awareness.

Introduction

When I was a child of eight, my parents took me to Waiilatpu, near Walla Walla, Washington, where the Whitman Mission National Historic Sitestands today amidst endless vistas of central Washington grasslands. A four-foot section of an adobe house was on display deep in the ground.

It had been dug out and a cement wall built around it for stability. Today, the wall has been reburied for preservation purposes. But I’ll never forget the feeling I had, as I peered into the earth at the strange artifact with the February wind ripping through my thin coat, that I was witnessing a relic of a tragic, buried past.

Indeed, I was.

In 1836 Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and her husband Marcus traveled as Presbyterian missionaries from upstate