Brandy on the Rocks at a Bar near You

By AMANDA COYNE
Anchorage Daily News correspondent

Published: February 26, 2006
Last Modified: February 26, 2006 at 04:53 AM

It's true, so true it's nearly a cliche: There is something about Alaska that draws people in search of part of themselves. I haven't met anybody who has walked away finding that part, but then I live in the world of real instead of fictional people,
where if epiphanies happen at all, they're more along the lines of "Dude, it's cold and dark up here."

Yet for all the sled-loads of us up here, we haven't, until recently, seen ourselves much portrayed in literature, which is odd because many of us roamers tend toward poetic scratchings during the dark Alaska night of the soul.

But recognition is coming. Although writing about a different kind of search, Seth Kantner, in "Ordinary Wolves," took a big, beautiful stab at creating a wandering, confused Alaskan. And now there's Brandy, Cindy Dyson's main character in her beautiful debut novel, "And She Was."

Until now, we haven't been introduced to her. But she's everywhere. She's the one in too-tight jeans and high heels, slipping on the snow, wearing a scowl. She's the woman on the bar stool, staring impassively at her reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. She's the aloof one at parties who steals glances at your boyfriend and won't even condescend to talk makeup in the bathroom with you. Her past is fuzzy. Her present a question mark. She's in a place too big for her, a place that could swallow her and leave her, 10 years hence, still sitting on that same bar stool.

Although she could exist nearly anywhere there are boys and booze, Dyson has Brandy floating up to Dutch Harbor in 1986 to follow her boyfriend, Thad, an any-man whose biggest sin is that he falls in love with Brandy and whose biggest redemption is that he's away often on a fishing boat, leaving her to explore the island, snort coke and drink with many of its inhabitants.

Her reaction to Thad and to herself is due in equal part to a drunken, intellectually failed father and a trashy blond mother to whom that father was a complete fool. Her reaction to the island is due to the way the island, like her, is "still undone, still being formed." It's a place that "falls apart and reforms right beneath your boots." And it's a place of power, a place that's "deep and gray and moving with intention."

There are also big lessons to be learned from a group of Alaska Native women, one of whom is a coke whore, and another, Little Liz, who has to be peeled from the Elbow Room's bathroom floor at closing time. These women are more than they seem, as Brandy discovers, and their stories as well as their ancestral histories are interlaced with Brandy's remaking.

As interesting and heartbreaking as the Native women's stories are, this is ultimately Brandy's book, and this has provoked some criticism. One reviewer wrote that a white person finding herself amidst Native lore and legend is now a fictional cliche. I'd agree if Brandy overly romanticized that culture.

But this is no Ya-Ya sisterhood-gone-north story. These women's divine secrets involve murder and cannibalism. And although the stories don't always mesh and Brandy's epiphany is a little too easy, few writers have had the nerve to use Alaska Native culture as a realistic plot device, which necessitates an unflinching look at that culture. Certainly, Little Liz is a first.

Brandy is also an original creation. Today's bookshelves are bulging with bad girls but not multifaceted ones who can expound upon ancient Roman history, have a one-night stand just because and clean up the bits of cocaine on the mirror, all in the course of a few hours.

Another brilliant risk: You probably won't much like Brandy, at least for a while. She's mean, she's smart, she's confused and she needs to grow up. Sound familiar? In fact, if this were a different kind of book -- more sweeping, larger in scope -- she might have served as a good metaphor for the whole state.

But Dyson doesn't have such lofty goals for Brandy. She keeps her pretty well planted in Dutch Harbor, and it gets distracting in those places where she takes Brandy out of her narrative to expound on things like blondness and bar fights and bathroom graffiti. But the soul-at-stake plot, the historical weavings and Dyson's mastery of language, for both scene setting and dialogue, make for a big, riveting, sometimes explosive, necessary read.

We've seen Dyson's character all around us, and yet, until now, we haven't known her name. Her name is Brandy. She's on the rocks in a bar near you, trying to find a way home.
Writer Amanda Coyne lives in Anchorage.

OTHER VIEWS

Brandy "was 31, the daughter of a bum and a slut, saddled with a liquor name." It's with these dubious credentials that our heroine finds herself -- yet again -- drifting after a man. ... Dyson expertly interlaces Brandy's story, set in 1986, with the vibrant history of the Aleuts hundreds of years earlier. While relishing the smart prose, bawdy humor and '80s references, readers will find themselves rooting for the hard-as-nails blonde as she wrestles her demons and begins to redirect her fate.
-- Publishers Weekly

Dyson deftly peels back the layers of Brandy's persona to reveal the woman behind the blond hair and high-heeled boots while revealing the layers of tradition, suppression and mystery shrouding Dutch Harbor. As the story shifts back and forth from the present through 250 years of Aleutian history, the reader becomes immersed in Aleutian culture and the loss of that culture at the hands of Russian traders, early missionaries, social workers and World War II relocators. ... Combining her memories ... and meticulous research into Aleutian anthropology, (Dyson) has created an unforgettable first novel for adults.
-- Library Journal