Spokane author explores coming of age in Wyoming in the 1950s (2024)

Spokane author Mike Aleman has written a novel that’s set in one of the most important places in his life, Powder River, Wyoming. It’s a story about a turbulent year in the life of a teenage boy.

Aleman spent most of his formative years living with his family and three siblings in Chicago.

"My folks realized they were going to have four teenagers in the city streets at the same moment. And they were anxious about it," he said.

Mike Aleman: "My dad had driven truck for a guy who had gone to Yellowstone for vacation, drove through Powder River, Wyoming, which had a population at that time of about 96. There was a bar for sale called the Tumble Inn and he was a big drinker. His name was Bud Fisher. He rolled his car. He wrote to my dad and asked if my dad would be interested in coming out and working for him for a while. So we moved west and it was a great thing for me.”

Mike Aleman: “The quality of the life, the open air, the prairie. I would take an apple and a sandwich and walk for all morning and just see it and discover it. There was a railroad station that had been closed down for years, which they never emptied. And I could go in there and sit on the sofa and go in the kitchen. And I was always fascinated. I remember thinking people lived here. They celebrated Christmases and birthdays. They had their lives here, and now they're gone. But the place somehow still holds them.”

Just as the place still holds Aleman. After high school, he enlisted in the Navy. That’s when he began writing. Then he went on to college and a long career as an English teacher at Spokane's Lewis and Clark High School. Off and on, he wrote and published novels, short stories and poems.

In 2020, after he retired, he sat down to write a story based in that Wyoming hamlet of his youth.

Mike Aleman: “The opening line is, 'The year my mother left us, my father found a dog outside of Powder River.' It sets up the book. I mean, Matthew Christman is the boy, lives with his father because his mother leaves in that first 10 pages, and has a terrible year.”

The novel explores the ups and downs of that year, including his relationships with his parents and with a young woman who has had her own share of turmoil. The novel has some autobiographical elements.

Mike Aleman: “All of the peripheral occurrences in the novel are real. I mean, there's, you know, my father found a dog outside of Powder River. That's true. We named him Lucky. That's true. There's an episode with a rattlesnake. That's true. The main thrust of Matthew's temptation and fall, the fall of man, is all fictional. And so I would guess that all good novels have numbers of truths in them.”

Mike Aleman: “I carried that book with me in my head, I think, for a long time. It was just there. You know, that could be a good book someday. That's a good story. There's a lot of things that happened. And finally you start putting them down. And then I tend to believe that short stories, novels, and even poems, they lead you where they want you to go. I had no idea what would occur for Matthew and how he would respond and how it would end. When I first started writing, I read a lot of material about being a writer. There's a whole school that says outline your novel. So I thought, well, that's a good idea. And by the time I'd outlined half of Powder River, I couldn't stand it anymore. I wanted to write it. And so I threw the outline away and just started writing and let it take me where I wanted it to go, where it wanted to go. Because I know if you create a character like Matthew, he has to behave a certain way according to the character you've created.”

Doug: “Those romantic feelings you have about Powder River, do they carry over into the book? I mean do you have that same level of enthusiasm for the town carry over into the book?”

Mike Aleman: “I think so, yeah. Matthew says a number of times, people in the West are. People in the West do. People in the West know. And there's a scene where in his grief he's shooting insulators off of telephone lines. And he knows that everybody's going to know eventually. And he says something about if a girl in Powder River – when a girl in Powder River gets her period, everybody knows. And so that sharing of life is really valuable. And I think Matthew does know that throughout. The people who support him, even after he messes up royally, the adults give him time before he's brought back in. They don't just reject him. And there's a character named Whitey who's a villainous character, although he's simply villainous. He's not evil. He just drinks a lot and fights a lot. Even he, when there's a crisis, returns and offers. And that's really a good thing. I mean I can really see the value of living rurally. Because I had both experiences, you know, Chicago and Powder River. And they're both valuable. But the Powder River experience was probably the coming-of-age experience really.”

You can buy “Powder River 1957” at Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane or online at various outlets.