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Tailings: A Memoir
In August of 2001, Kaethe Schwehn needed her own, personal Eden. She was a twenty-two-year-old trying to come to terms with a failed romance, the dissolution of her parents' marriage, and her own floundering faith. At first, Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center nestled in the Cascade Mountains, seemed like a utopian communal meals, consensus decision-making, and eco-friendly practices. But as the months wore on, the idyll faded and Kaethe was left with 354 inches of snow, one prowling cougar, sixty-five disgruntled villagers, and a pile of copper mine tailings 150 feet high. Her Eden was a toxic Superfund site. How do we navigate the space between who we are and who we would like to become, between the world as it is and world as we imagine it could be? Tailings is a lyrical memoir of intentional community told from the front lines, a passionate and awkward journey about embracing the "in-between" times of our lives with grace and hope."Kaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book."--Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer"Schwehn's Tailings, is, like all of my favorite contemporary nonfiction, uncategorizable--part memoir, part spiritual reflection, part reportage. Brilliant in all of its guises, Tailings only makes me want to read more by Kaethe Schwehn. She writes with fierce intelligence and luminous clarity on all of her loss, grace, this very particular village, and the hard work of renewal. Tailings is a beautiful and original book by a remarkable writer."--Rene Steinke, author ofFriendswood"Already by the second chapter, this is a book hard to lay aside. Schwehn's prose is liquid and intelligent. It catches your interest immediately and swings you from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. Her observations never stand still but sweep you forward into her story/memoir. She is a genuine artist."--Walter Wangerin Jr., author of Ragman--and Other Cries of FaithKaethe Schwehn holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and is the coeditor of Claiming Our Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts (2014). Schwehn has been the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and a Loft Mentor Series award. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in numerous journals. She teaches at St. Olaf College and lives in Northfield, Minnesota, with her husband and two children.
138 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 8, 2014
About the author
Kaethe Schwehn
5 books49 followersKaethe Schwehn holds a B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her memoir, Tailings, won the Minnesota Book Award for creative nonfiction in 2015 and her debut novel, The Rending and the Nest, will be published by Bloomsbury in February of 2018. She has been the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board grant and a Loft Mentor Series award. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She teaches at Saint Olaf College and lives in Northfield, Minnesota.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 26, 2024
Devoured this book over 24 hours, it was that good! Maybe I’m biased since the author was my professor but it was written so beautifully. The perfect last book to read at Holden Village before leaving tomorrow :,)
July 30, 2025
professor schwehn gifted me this book the day of graduation. ‘to em,’ it says, along with a little something more, but i know she gave this to me very intentionally, that ‘to em’ was a double entendre. i knew it the moment i started. i cried through the first thirty pages and again when i finished it (and am still crying now).
i feel so lucky to have seen the ways in which professor schwehn influenced my writing in this book. i feel even luckier to have a professor who cares for me so deeply, even now that i’m out of her classroom. i feel the luckiest to have been so emotionally impacted by this book; she knew just the way it would land and she was right.
i feel so lucky to have seen the ways in which professor schwehn influenced my writing in this book. i feel even luckier to have a professor who cares for me so deeply, even now that i’m out of her classroom. i feel the luckiest to have been so emotionally impacted by this book; she knew just the way it would land and she was right.
January 6, 2015
This slender memoir will stick with you much longer than many bulkier books. Every sentence in it glows like the orange remains of the mining process -- called tailings. Tailings turns out to be an apt title, not just for the beauty but also because tailings are toxic, veritably eternal, perfect symbols for the "terrible beauty" writers aspire to.
The vivid details of this story, which takes place 13 years before publication of the book, reminded me of the classic memoir Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. Here's just one example of a deep image that could only come of stories she was told, since she was in utero when they took place: "The bed is king-sized, which means my parents can sleep all night without touching, their worlds distinct and contained: my mother full of sickness and mystery, my father full of the $1000 he was given and the $20 he had taken away.
And I am somewhere in the middle, coming into being."
The passionate desire for transcendence but the resistance to both exclusion and sentimentality makes the Christian faith dimension of this book approachable to all readers, especially those who love the sensibility of Anne Lamott.
The ostensible subject of the memoir is recovery from the wound of a lover's abandonment, a sore that festers and replicates an earlier wound from childhood. This is dangerous territory for the memoirist because the temptation will be toward self-pity. Kaethe Schwehn, however, will have none of that, partly because her aspirations go far beyond her own life. She brings in the history of the land of Holden Village, how it was purchased in the late ninteteenth century by the man for whom it is now named, James Henry Holden; how it was exploited for iron ore to feed the emerging industrial machine in America. How it was sold to Lutherans and became either an intentional community, hippie holdover, or Eden, your choice.
As much as the author loves "the village," however, she sees it clearly, as both divine and fallen. She can sing its praises: "The snow covers everything that is rough or sharp or scratchy in soft waves. If the sound of the word ululation were made into a landscape it would be this." The beauty does not lull the author or the reader into forgetting that the rough, sharp, and scratchy places still exist.
Resisting clichés and expected endings all the way, the author concludes: "Holden didn't let me escape the world; instead, the village helped me make more room for the world inside myself." And what a wonderful world that is.
The vivid details of this story, which takes place 13 years before publication of the book, reminded me of the classic memoir Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov. Here's just one example of a deep image that could only come of stories she was told, since she was in utero when they took place: "The bed is king-sized, which means my parents can sleep all night without touching, their worlds distinct and contained: my mother full of sickness and mystery, my father full of the $1000 he was given and the $20 he had taken away.
And I am somewhere in the middle, coming into being."
The passionate desire for transcendence but the resistance to both exclusion and sentimentality makes the Christian faith dimension of this book approachable to all readers, especially those who love the sensibility of Anne Lamott.
The ostensible subject of the memoir is recovery from the wound of a lover's abandonment, a sore that festers and replicates an earlier wound from childhood. This is dangerous territory for the memoirist because the temptation will be toward self-pity. Kaethe Schwehn, however, will have none of that, partly because her aspirations go far beyond her own life. She brings in the history of the land of Holden Village, how it was purchased in the late ninteteenth century by the man for whom it is now named, James Henry Holden; how it was exploited for iron ore to feed the emerging industrial machine in America. How it was sold to Lutherans and became either an intentional community, hippie holdover, or Eden, your choice.
As much as the author loves "the village," however, she sees it clearly, as both divine and fallen. She can sing its praises: "The snow covers everything that is rough or sharp or scratchy in soft waves. If the sound of the word ululation were made into a landscape it would be this." The beauty does not lull the author or the reader into forgetting that the rough, sharp, and scratchy places still exist.
Resisting clichés and expected endings all the way, the author concludes: "Holden didn't let me escape the world; instead, the village helped me make more room for the world inside myself." And what a wonderful world that is.
October 26, 2018
Intriguing writing.
Several quotes stood out to me, including:
"You're not the same as when you came. Neither are we." - summer sign posted (p. ix)
"Work fills the present while we tackle the more daunting task of what we will do with the future." (p. 10)
"Vocation, for Buechner, wasn't just about serving God through work, it was about serving God through the work that you do best, finding the place where, in his words, "your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."" (p. 10)
"...instead, the ceiling looks like a liturgical acid trip." (p. 19)
"To practice a religion is, in some ways, to take responsibility for it. This is why it's easier to be spiritual than religious. You can pick and choose the things that make sense and feel right." (p. 20)
"The VC, with its acid trip ceiling and altar standing just to the left of the free throw line, is the most real church I know." (p. 21)
"One of the first directors of the village, Carroll Hinderlie, declared that that gospel lives through controversy. I think what he meant by this is that the work of Jesus, the political work, rarely gets done from a place of complicity or active passivity. I think he meant that the gospel is mysterious and contentious and if we get to a place where we thin we understand it, we are likely to be in trouble. I think he meant that sometimes truth is found in the space where two ideas create enough friction against each other to make a kind of fire. The kind of fire that, as we understand it here in the wilderness, is necessary for new growth." (p. 34)
""Here is what I learned: I'm an Easter woman. I believe in the resurrection, sure, but I also believe in the tomb. I believe that darkness is crucial to the story....You're in the tomb, so look around. See what it has to offer. You won't be here forever."" (p. 53)
"So what do we do with the middle? What can the middle of things - the sick insides of Copper Mountain, the darkness of the tomb, the temperate relationship, the gray days of February - what can these things give us? And how can we receive what they offer with any kind of grace?" (p. 59)
"Silence is supposed to be a refreshing balm but I find this silence oppressive...The silence is worse than a cougar." (p. 67)
""Hospitality" is one of those words within the Christian vocabulary that is lovely in theory and irritating in practice." (p. 106)
"Because you can't predict the events or the outcome, you can only, at any given moment, do the right thing." (p. 110)
"Philoxenia, as the Greeks called it, wasn't just common courtesy..." (p. 112)
"But maybe hospitality prepares us in a different way: to keep the doors of our hearts open, to let those we love pass in and out." (p. 112)
"After all, if you are unknown, your presence or absence hardly matters." (p. 114)
"Holden didn't let me escape the world; instead, the village helped me make more room for the world inside myself." (p. 121)
Several quotes stood out to me, including:
"You're not the same as when you came. Neither are we." - summer sign posted (p. ix)
"Work fills the present while we tackle the more daunting task of what we will do with the future." (p. 10)
"Vocation, for Buechner, wasn't just about serving God through work, it was about serving God through the work that you do best, finding the place where, in his words, "your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."" (p. 10)
"...instead, the ceiling looks like a liturgical acid trip." (p. 19)
"To practice a religion is, in some ways, to take responsibility for it. This is why it's easier to be spiritual than religious. You can pick and choose the things that make sense and feel right." (p. 20)
"The VC, with its acid trip ceiling and altar standing just to the left of the free throw line, is the most real church I know." (p. 21)
"One of the first directors of the village, Carroll Hinderlie, declared that that gospel lives through controversy. I think what he meant by this is that the work of Jesus, the political work, rarely gets done from a place of complicity or active passivity. I think he meant that the gospel is mysterious and contentious and if we get to a place where we thin we understand it, we are likely to be in trouble. I think he meant that sometimes truth is found in the space where two ideas create enough friction against each other to make a kind of fire. The kind of fire that, as we understand it here in the wilderness, is necessary for new growth." (p. 34)
""Here is what I learned: I'm an Easter woman. I believe in the resurrection, sure, but I also believe in the tomb. I believe that darkness is crucial to the story....You're in the tomb, so look around. See what it has to offer. You won't be here forever."" (p. 53)
"So what do we do with the middle? What can the middle of things - the sick insides of Copper Mountain, the darkness of the tomb, the temperate relationship, the gray days of February - what can these things give us? And how can we receive what they offer with any kind of grace?" (p. 59)
"Silence is supposed to be a refreshing balm but I find this silence oppressive...The silence is worse than a cougar." (p. 67)
""Hospitality" is one of those words within the Christian vocabulary that is lovely in theory and irritating in practice." (p. 106)
"Because you can't predict the events or the outcome, you can only, at any given moment, do the right thing." (p. 110)
"Philoxenia, as the Greeks called it, wasn't just common courtesy..." (p. 112)
"But maybe hospitality prepares us in a different way: to keep the doors of our hearts open, to let those we love pass in and out." (p. 112)
"After all, if you are unknown, your presence or absence hardly matters." (p. 114)
"Holden didn't let me escape the world; instead, the village helped me make more room for the world inside myself." (p. 121)
September 15, 2016
Ahhh, some nice insightful creative nonfiction that tempers the insightful creative nonfiction with cynical 20-something isolation and dullness. I really liked this. I also finished this wanting more, yet I guess that's exactly the point.
If you're in one of the "in between moments" of life, I think you'll like this.
If you're in one of the "in between moments" of life, I think you'll like this.
August 7, 2015
This memoir of a year spent in a remote, sometimes harsh but wonderfully spiritual place was pure pleasure to read. Crafted by a gifted author, nature lover, and old soul, it will remind readers of their own young selves and the work it takes to grow.
April 20, 2015
I loved reading about the rhythms of life throughout the year at Holden Village. Made me want to visit again!
December 9, 2024
read this memoir while living in the village, jterm 2022. kaethe was also there; her spouse teaches at a university that was also running a course there that winter. she hosted several poetry/writing workshops, all of which were a gift to attend.
i cannot express to the world the ways in which this novella encapsulates the village in all its cutesy, messy ways. forever grateful for that experience. I am from the midwest and moved to the mountains — I revisit this text from time to time when i feel as if I am not adult-enough to be making these choices.
i returned to the village summer of 2023, and I thought I saw her children running around while I was waiting for the bus up. impossible, lol. just seeing things. turns out, they were all leaving the village the day i was incoming, and our paths crossed for about 40 minutes that day.
small world. this book will always remind me of that.
i recommend this to anyone who has lived in the village or who has heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who once travelled here. those who have no idea what i am talking about have just as much to gain. could teach us all to live a bit more intentionally.
i cannot express to the world the ways in which this novella encapsulates the village in all its cutesy, messy ways. forever grateful for that experience. I am from the midwest and moved to the mountains — I revisit this text from time to time when i feel as if I am not adult-enough to be making these choices.
i returned to the village summer of 2023, and I thought I saw her children running around while I was waiting for the bus up. impossible, lol. just seeing things. turns out, they were all leaving the village the day i was incoming, and our paths crossed for about 40 minutes that day.
small world. this book will always remind me of that.
i recommend this to anyone who has lived in the village or who has heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who once travelled here. those who have no idea what i am talking about have just as much to gain. could teach us all to live a bit more intentionally.
July 16, 2018
Though I loved all the reminders and memories of being at Holden Village several times, I was disappointed in this memoir. Schwehn relives her year at Holden in 2001 at age 23. Her own story is integrated well with Holden's history and the everyday life in a Lutheran Retreat Center.
March 1, 2020
Felt some of the odd sexual content/comments at the beginning didn’t add to the author’s reflections and journey in any meaningful way, but overall was a fascinating picture of one women’s journey to letting go, finding herself, and exploring faith in intentional community.
June 4, 2018
Loved it! A wonderful glimpse into life at Holden Village and how life can shift over the course of a year.
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February 1, 2022I enjoyed this book, especially being here in the village right now. I would have found it hard to remember the village so closely had I been home. Quick read and it made me smile so it was worth it.
February 17, 2022
Lovely. Lots to highlight. A memoir of someone who was young and finding her place in the same era I was gives me more love and empathy for my younger self.
January 5, 2017
A brief memoir of a year in a Lutheran retreat center in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. The story fails to capture. I really don't care that the author, Kaethe Schwehn, suffers through a failed romance. I am still puzzling over the book title. I understand that the retreat center is built atop the tailings of a mining camp. If she is trying to suggest this "superfund site" is a metaphor for her failed romance, well her comparison fell short. I just have no sympathy for the author.
On the upside, the language she uses to create images and paint the pictures of life in the Cascade Mountains is worth attention. Her descriptions of the of the switchbacks, the lake, and the retreat itself makes me want to visit a "utopian ideal." This memoir provides a lesson in the use and value of language.
On the upside, the language she uses to create images and paint the pictures of life in the Cascade Mountains is worth attention. Her descriptions of the of the switchbacks, the lake, and the retreat itself makes me want to visit a "utopian ideal." This memoir provides a lesson in the use and value of language.
November 16, 2018
A friend from Minnesota asked me if I had read this book “because it mentions Wenatchee.” It is a reminiscence/story of the time the author spent in 2002 (and earlier) in Holden Village, a Lutheran community center only accessible by boat at the far end of Lake Chelan (Wenatchee would be the largest nearby city, but it is hours away). The (semi)-permanent residents of Holden Village are structured as an intentional community and the author talks about the importance and difficulties of such a community and how it helps in her healing process. She is only 22 years old and her serious boyfriend has just broken up with her and found another girlfriend.
I like that she uses the land to illustrate human emotions. Holden used to be a large copper mine and is now (cleanup had not really begun in 2002) a major Superfund Site. The tailings from the mine form an important metaphor. The surrounding area is very beautiful mountains and lakes. Much of the story takes place in the winter when the snow piles as high as the eaves.
I also liked the thoughts about Kant’s ethical scenario on honesty (p 110).
Much of this very slim book left me more or less cold. I have zero interest in intentional communities and found much of the twenty year old approach to life shallow and the adults who are still attached to that life rather sad. For me it was a somewhat interesting commentary and picture of the remains of a commune life that I was familiar with (but never truly a part of) back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Holden Village was closed for renovation for about 2 years and has reopened. I believe it has a different structure now. It seems more like a BnB, and I have had friends who have stayed for a few days and hiked in the incredible mountains around Holden. There are still Vespers every evening, but you are no longer required to attend.
I like that she uses the land to illustrate human emotions. Holden used to be a large copper mine and is now (cleanup had not really begun in 2002) a major Superfund Site. The tailings from the mine form an important metaphor. The surrounding area is very beautiful mountains and lakes. Much of the story takes place in the winter when the snow piles as high as the eaves.
I also liked the thoughts about Kant’s ethical scenario on honesty (p 110).
Much of this very slim book left me more or less cold. I have zero interest in intentional communities and found much of the twenty year old approach to life shallow and the adults who are still attached to that life rather sad. For me it was a somewhat interesting commentary and picture of the remains of a commune life that I was familiar with (but never truly a part of) back in the 1960s and 1970s.
Holden Village was closed for renovation for about 2 years and has reopened. I believe it has a different structure now. It seems more like a BnB, and I have had friends who have stayed for a few days and hiked in the incredible mountains around Holden. There are still Vespers every evening, but you are no longer required to attend.
May 12, 2015
For such a slender book, this took a long time to read. The story is of a young woman (early 20's) who signs on to spend a year as staff at a remote Lutheran retreat center in the Cascade Mountains where she has been going with her family since she was a child. She expects her boyfriend (whom she calls The Intended for about half the book, before giving him his name) to come along a little bit later to be with her, but soon receives a letter from him saying that he's not coming, he's going to Europe with another woman instead. This echoes the break-up of her parents' marriage, where her father told her mother at the last minute that he was not coming to Holden Village with them. The story becomes one of struggling through an in-between time that bridges the end of an important relationship and the start of a new life at a writing program in the spring--yet to be determined which one, since the author is sending out applications in the fall and winter while she's at Holden Village. The in-between time involves a lot of casting around, trying to figure out what to do with herself--sleep with the cook? Drink a lot of red wine from a Nalgene water bottle? Hold herself at a distance from the rituals and procedures that the center has developed for governing itself? Her behavior is not exemplary, but her evocation of the sense of claustrophobia and doldrums that set in on the villagers as the winter progresses provides something of an explanation for that.
I enjoyed the book. I didn't think the author showed a lot of insight into her own state of mind or behavior, but I felt that her description of Holden Village as a place and a community made up for that somewhat.
I enjoyed the book. I didn't think the author showed a lot of insight into her own state of mind or behavior, but I felt that her description of Holden Village as a place and a community made up for that somewhat.
May 10, 2015
Sex, drinking, swearing -- just another memoir of time spent at a church camp/retreat center. But, fortunately, there's more. Kaethe Schwehn writes of the nine months she spent at Holden Village high in the Cascade mountains of Washington State. She was 23,recently out of college and applying to MFA programs in writing while marking time living in this intentional Christian faith community. At the same time she is struggling with a break up from her boyfriend, her "Intended" as she calls him, which he initiated. The memoir is well-crafted, as Schwehn takes us through the reverberations of her crushed hopes and her sometimes ambivalent feelings about the village, its aims, the people she is in community with, and herself. Just like the author, I bogged down in the middle, reading about the never-ending winter, the isolation, and the sameness of one day to the next. Yet, as spring approaches moods brighten as it comes time to leave Holden -- more self-aware, ready to begin making her own career, community, life.
May 24, 2015
This book won the Minnesota Book Award recently, so I thought I'd buy it. It is written extremely well with images that are fresh and unusual. The author writes almost entirely about her own feelings, so the many of the other characters in the memoir are just known by name, but we have no idea of what their personalities might be like.
The thing that amazed me is that the whole experience for the author is based on a year at a Lutheran retreat for ingenuous hippies. The author stays a year, but several people at the retreat stay for years on end. The philosophy of the retreat center, high up in the mountains of Washington, is vaguely Christian but pretty naive, as if forgiveness will heal all ills. Some residents stay year-around, but the village also receives busloads of high school students in the summer.
So it's an excellent but uncritical book about a very weird place.
The thing that amazed me is that the whole experience for the author is based on a year at a Lutheran retreat for ingenuous hippies. The author stays a year, but several people at the retreat stay for years on end. The philosophy of the retreat center, high up in the mountains of Washington, is vaguely Christian but pretty naive, as if forgiveness will heal all ills. Some residents stay year-around, but the village also receives busloads of high school students in the summer.
So it's an excellent but uncritical book about a very weird place.
January 26, 2016
I liked Schwehn's writing. The story itself was rather unremarkable, but the way in which she articulated the mundane and lackluster was surprisingly engaging. One of my favorite quotes: "So much of my own unremarkable suffering, I realize now, springs from my own inability to reconcile the life I want to lead, the person I want to become, with the life I am in and the person I truly am."
October 16, 2014
I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, both in the author's recounting of and reflecting on the end of a relationship, but also her experience at Holden Village, a place very dear to me. Her book evoked many of my own memories and experiences at Holden and in my 20s. Loved it!
January 1, 2015
Tailings contains wonderful reflections on simple living in an intentional community and the complex questions one grapples with in such a community. When I was finished reading, I was hungry for more!
August 1, 2015
Well, there were plenty of beautiful passages. But such a melancholic narrator... She really captures what it's like to be a angsty early-twenty something who has a broken heart and notebooks full of poems. So maybe it was just too close for comfort.
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October 11, 2015Love this memoir. Read it in one sitting. Smart, funny, people I wanted to spend time with, big issues to wrestle with, fresh humor, and insight into a community and a place that's fascinating and complex. The pages nearly turn themselves.
Recommend very highly.
Recommend very highly.
February 15, 2011
Sort of a stream-of-consciousness about a gal who attends Holden Village in Washington and tries to heal after a breakup
June 5, 2015
Terrific, insightful, well-written memoir.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews