Raised in Ruins by Tara Neilson

Book Review by Rebecca Beardsall

Opening with a brown bear stalking the house, Raised in Ruins, a charming, dynamic memoir, invites the reader to join the Neilson family on their adventure of living around the remains of an abandoned cannery in Southeast Alaska.

Back and forth, back and forth, it paced agitatedly, disturbed by our presence next to the salmon-choked creek. Our mom was terrified of guns, but she got down the .22-250, which she probably couldn’t have shot if she tried, and told us kids to go upstairs. We ignored her. (5)

Tara Neilson’s memoir Raised in Ruins brings together her family narrative and glimpses from the past lives lingering through time in the remote landscape of Alaska.

Neilson shares riveting stories of life with her parents and four other siblings, a pack of dogs, and a few other brave souls that moved in and out of their lives on Union Bay. Homeschool adventures, movie nights, and sacks full of junk food brought home from their father on his return from his logging job. A life of bear drills, a pack of wolves luring their precious dogs into danger, life-taking seas, and storms. The building of a life, a home, and essentially their own little town, including “Boomin’ Union Bay School,” required grit and a sense of adventure.

Tales of a childhood play, dress-up, and music, “The outdoor speakers on the floathouse provided us with a soundtrack for everything we did and accompanied innumerable unforgettable moments” (162), intersect with shadows of the past. Neilson states: “There was a sense of the place being haunted, but not in the usual sense of that word. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I did think that as long as a person was remembered at least a remnant of them lived on” (53).

Life amongst the ruins of the Union Bay cannery on the Cleveland Peninsula of Alaska provided Neilson with reflections on the previous vibrant space of active industry. Neilson states, “And of course there was the past all around me, making its presence felt” (171). She takes the reader on a journey through time and shares some of the lives of the Union Bay Cannery workers. The book ends with the chapter “Three Union Bay Cannery Workers,” an apt way to end a memoir rooted in place. 

Weaving together a narrative that is part survival, part tenderness, which will make you laugh and cry. Raised in Ruins is a vivid and delightful memoir.

Rebecca Beardsall (MA, Lehigh University; MFA, Western Washington University) is the author of My Place in the Spiral. Find her at: rebeccabeardsall.com