Cohassett Beach Chronicles; World War II in the Pacific Northwest
by Kathy Hogan, edited by Klancy Clark de Nevers and Lucy Hart,
Oregon State University Press, May, 1995. The book contains a
collection of wartime essays and stories written by Kathy Hogan and
published by de Nevers’ father in a weekly newspaper, The Grays
Harbor Post, in Aberdeen, a small lumbering town on the coast of
Washington.
FROM THE REVIEWERS:
“ These columns . . .
are really quite memorable. [Kathy Hogan was] a woman of such talent”
- Scott Simon
- Weekend Edition Saturday
- National Public Radio
- August 19, 1995
“Decades of distorted memory and romantic
illusions have overshadowed the truth [about life on the west coast of
America during World War II.] . . Cohassett Beach Chronicles gives
us the details of everyday life as lived by everyday people. It gives
us real history.”
- Dan Hays
- Statesman Journal
- Salem, OR.
- August 15, 1995
“... we’ve read plenty about the
battlefields. Cohassett Beach Chronicles tells of civilian life along
the Washington coast. The most compelling thing [is the fact that]. .
.This enchanting book ... wasn’t written years after the events it
chronicles -- or after time changed memories.”
- Bellingham Herald
- Bellingham, Washington
- August 14, 1995
“Cohassett Beach Chronicles is the best kind
of unburied treasure -- brilliant, unexpected and functional. You can
open it to any page and find something interesting . . . no one except
Studs Terkel has captured the mood of wartime America as well as
Hogan.”
- John Hughes
- Daily World
- Aberdeen, WA
- April 30, 1995
“It was what she wrote about life in
Cohassett Beach after Pearl Harbor that gave [Hogan’s newspaper]
column lasting significance . . . Spunky querulousness and acceptance
of shortages and the intricacies and irrationalities of rationing
...the essence of small-town life during the war . .This is a splendid
book.”
- Murray Morgan
- Tacoma News Tribune
- June 4, 1995
“Kathy Hogan is truly an artist; her pallet
ranges from the muted grayed pastels of morning on the beach, to the
harsh colors of loss and news of young men killed in action.”
- Inkslinger
- Salt Lake City
- June, 1995
“Her cunningly witty columns are filled
with soldiers, and how they were treated . . . In reality [Kathy
Hogan] is not so much a community historian as a folklorist
documenting the foibles and fun of her neighbors and townsfolk.”
- Jonathan Jeffrey
- Library Journal
- June 1995
“As a kitchen chronicle of the war’s
homefront history on the 50th anniversary of its conclusion, Cohassett
Beach Chronicles tames and almost domesticates the wild colossus of
combat. Like its Neil Simon counterpart on the other side of the
continent, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” it finds its niche in the telling
details of family life, solitary reflection and human foibles.“
- Paul Swenson
- The Salt Lake Tribune
- Salt Lake City, UT
- August 27, 1995
