Rick Steber

In his new release — Oregon’s Isolate Coast — Bo Shindler does what the best storytellers do: he gets out of the way and allows the landscape, and the people, do the speaking. The story tells the geological origin of the west side of Oregon, the life of the Native People, and changes that came to the coast with the arrival of the first sailing ships to the Northwest. The Oregon Coast has always been a different world from the rest of the state. It is beautiful, rugged and a stubborn stretch of land, cut off by mountains and battered by storms off the Pacific. The people who inhabit this region have grit in their bones and Shindler honors that grit without romanticizing it. He writes in spare, honest language, the kind that doesn’t waste your time.
If you care about Oregon, about its hidden corners and extraordinary men and women who made something out of nothing in a harsh and remote land, read this book. Bo Shindler has done the hard work of saving a piece of history that might otherwise have washed away with the tide. The best word I can find to describe this book is just — WOW.