A Strong West Wind

by Gail Caldwell

In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plains of Texas, Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place. A Strong West Wind begins in the 1950s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandle–a place of both boredom and beauty, its flat horizons broken only by oil derricks, grain elevators, and church steeples. Its story belongs to a girl who grew up surrounded by dust storms and cattle ranches and summer lightning, who took refuge from the vastness of the land and the ever-present wind by retreating into books. What she found there, from renegade women to men who lit out for the territory, turned out to offer a blueprint for her own future. Caldwell would grow up to become a writer, but first she would have to fall in love with a man who was every mother’s nightmare, live through the anguish and fire of the Vietnam years, and defy the father she adored, who had served as a master sergeant in the Second World War.
A Strong West Wind is a memoir of culture and history–of fathers and daughters, of two world wars and the passionate rebellions of the sixties. But it is also about the mythology of place and the evolution of a sensibility: about how literature can shape and even anticipate a life.
Caldwell possesses the extraordinary ability to illuminate the desires, stories, and lives of ordinary people. Written with humanity, urgency, and beautiful restraint, A Strong West Wind is a magical and unforgettable book, destined to become an American classic.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Book Club, Biography, Books About Books, Autobiography

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Jessaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amarillo by Morning

George Strait can sing a song about Amarillo and make the town seem wonderful, and Gail Caldwell, who grew up there, can do the same. It made me wish that we had taken a detour off I-44 to see it when we were driving by a few years ago> Still, I knew better. It could not have looked much different from what we were looking at: a desert all the way through the Texas panhandle. Like Gail said, the only thing blocking the sky were the grain elevators. Of course, when we drove into Groom, Texas, on I-44, to let our dog out, we saw a 100-foot statue of Jesus that also blocked the sky. I imagine that everyone that stepped out on their front porch saw it. There are no atheists in Groom.

Once in the life of America, the panhandle was overrun with buffalo grasses, until the new Americans came and dug it all up, leaving the land barren, especially in the panhandle. Mesquite grows there, we are told by Gail. Gotta love that mesquite as it makes for good barbeques. Flavors the meat.
This was Gail Caldwell’s autobiography. She was a book critic for the Boston Globe for 20 years and won the Pulitzer Prize. I picked it up because I liked its title, and now I can say this, I liked her story.

The first few chapters take in her youth, and how she went to the library often, and at age 11 she tried to check out, “The Origin of the Species,” and the librarian told her mom what she was trying to do. Her mom said, “Let her have it.” Not that she understood it, but Gail was reading books that I had never thought to read at that age or at any age. Still, I wrote down a few titles, just not Darwin’s.

When she grew up, she went to college and skipped out of a course to make her way to Berkeley, CA where she hung out on Telegraph Avenue, as I once had, and she even saw a communist Vietnamese flag on a house. We had one on our rooming house in Berkeley, but it flew high the day the Vietnam war had ended. The 60s. Hippies. She even took part in demonstrations. The only one that I had ever been in was quite by accident, when my ex was taking me by car to a doctor’s office that was located on Telegraph Avenue, and we found ourselves in the middle of one. When I saw the hippies, not really knowing what they were, I wanted to join them, and a few years later, I moved alone to Berkeley, to that rooming house.

Next, Gail went to Mexico with three friends. She lived the 60s almost as I had, but I found this life in ’69. She found it earlier. Mexico, for me, began in ’85. She mentioned camping out on a beach there, and a man opened her tent the next morning, and she kept saying “Vamonos,” which meant, “Let’s go,” and not “Get going.” He got the message but only because of her anger and hand gestures. He left. I mixed up the word “shit” for “afraid” in my college Spanish class and got a big laugh when I had said, “I am shit.” That was less dangerous for me than what she had said.

The last few chapters were spent remembering her aunt and her father. They really influenced her life, and for a woman that grew up in the sticks, well, without sticks, her life was a pretty good one.

Amarillo by Morning by George Strait

Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone
Everything that I've got, is just what I've got on
When that sun is high in that Texas sky
I'll be bucking at the county fair
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I'll be there

They took my saddle in Houston, broke my leg in Santa Fe
Lost my wife and a girlfriend somewhere along the way
Well I'll be looking for eight when they pull that gate
And I hope that judge ain't blind
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo's on my mind

Amarillo by morning, up from

[Brandon Kurtich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I cannot say that I was fan of this memoir at all. I usually love memoirs, especially about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, but this was a complete bore. Just a warning, Caldwell makes a TON of references to classic literary works which might go over some people's heads (like mine for one). It also seems like Caldwell uses these references to just show her large literary knowledge. Overall, just a book filled with literary references with some fillers.

[Linda Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where and when we are formed shapes us - whether we fight it, attempt to outrun it, or succumb - time and place is who we are. Our stories begin and end at home. Move from country to city, windswept plains to wet mountains, our bones are hardened in the time and place we are born. Caldwell puts the flesh on the bones. Strong, sere and melodic the words in this book sweep us from the panhandle of Texas to the bricks of Cambridge. Quiet and powerful, just as she describes the wind against the rocks. "...the land itself has a voice, capable of keening. Anyone who finds this a pathetic fallacy has never lain on a rock in high wind." "You have to be able to bear the keening but, worse, the silence, which is even greater than the wind." Caldwell's sublime gift is to write the truth she knows, and have it feel like it is your truth, too.

[SundayAtDusk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir showed up on another book's page at Amazon, where the title and picture caught my attention, since many of my own strongest childhood memories were of windy days or nights. Not in Texas, mind you, where author Gail Caldwell grew up. Like most individuals, her childhood home, with its strong west wind, forever has a grip on her, even though she hasn't lived in Texas in many years. Massachusetts is where she eventually ended up and where she still lives today. Many of her childhood and adult memories were interesting to me, many were not.

She was born in 1951, was slow to walk due to polio, but was one of the lucky ones who went on to have a normal type childhood. During the '60s, she became a hippie of sorts, protesting the war with no animosity towards the soldiers fighting the war. Fortunately, drug talk during those years was very limited, which is good, or I would have stopped reading; because I have had it with memoirs where the authors go on and on about their drug usage, as if all readers would be so fascinated about the topic.

Fortunately, Ms. Caldwell apparently has gotten her highest highs throughout life from reading books. More than a few are mentioned in this memoir. I have read none of them, but was acquainted with some of the few songs she mentioned. ("Now you're telling me, you're not nostalgic, then give me another word for it . . . ."*) By the time the '70s kicked in, and the author realized Utopia was not going to be a reality, she went back to college, studying American Studies. She then went on to become a college professor and a writer, never marrying or having children.

By the time I got to Chapter 10 in the memoir, I wasn't sure how interested I was going to be able to stay until the end. It turned out, though, it was from that chapter on to the end that I most enjoyed what Gail Caldwell wrote. She goes back to her childhood, her grandparents and other members of her extended family, plus talks more about her own parents, especially her father. There was a little more talk about the wind, but not as much as I would have liked. I had to go back to the beginning to read: "Is it too much to feel the wind carves you in this way? To this day I can hear its howling . . . ."

*Diamonds And Rust by Joan Baez

[Denise · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is great if you are looking for a cheap non narcotic sleep aid. I pride myself on never walking out on a bad film or not finishing a boring book, giving it a chance to redeem itself up until the final frame or word. This book will go down as one of the most pointless, boring, self absorbed books I've ever read. I see no reason why this memoir needed to be written other than the author won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism and someone probably told her she was so interesting that she should write her memoirs. They lied. There wasn't anything that compelling about her Texas upbringing, strained father/daughter relationship, and coming of age in the 60's that I hadn't already read before or better. Another irritating aspect was the author's self important name dropping of every book, character, and author she's ever read. Additionally, she spent an inordinate amount of time talking about how precocious she was as a child. I got it, you are smart and well read and above the rest of us mere mortals who dabble in books. Two words: Hated it.

[Heather Fineisen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caldwell fans will have a no brainer and any writer wannabe will want to add this to their list. But for the rest of the readers, Caldwell writes as if she's sprawled in your living room or sharing one of your pockets on a cold day. The listen is good and the book is a treat!

[Bucket · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read and a memoir. Gail tells her story - emphasizing her relationships with both her parents, her experiences with politics and feminism in the 60s, and, more than anything, her relationship with books and literature. Gail's life lessons seemed to come from these three sources/experiences and they were continuously interwoven throughout the book. Some experiences include - reading voraciously as a child, polio as an infant leaving her with a limp, being anti-war and getting high, hitchhiking, dropping out of school in the 60s - fueling arguments with her father, finding feminism and then (when she returns to school) finding that she would rather be herself and write and speak her way than 'the feminist way' - a die-hard feminist calls her masculine and a traitor, how her mom ultimately instilled in Gail her dreams, and from her dad she got stubbornness and a fierce independence.

Themes: family relationships, generational gap and also what is passed on, the 60s (war and peace, drugs, freedom, music, feminism, communal living), literature and reading, lessons learned

Caldwell had quite a few interesting statements about her life here that gave me pause and let me think - her thoughts on how children remember events that they don't understand in certain ways (she remembers her dress from her aunt's funeral because she must have been staring at her feet most of the day, for example) and often come to understand them differently later. She also had some great insights into how to look at one's parents and understand what they've given you - consciously and unconsciously. I liked the almost name-dropping feel of the insertion of the books that have affected her - it was a long, varied list. I also liked the ebb and flow rather than a straight chronology. This was quite introspective and clearly writing after the fact. We were never 'in the moment' - which removed me from the story a little. This was okay though, as it allowed me to connect her thoughts to my own life as I read.

[Dawn Downey · Rating 4 out of 5]

What really works for me, in this memoir of the sixties, is that it reaches well beyond the scope of counter culture and political activism. I admire the way Caldwell showed how geography, WWII, and the books she’s read shaped her personality as much as family genes did. (With plenty of references to books I should have read by now e.g. anything by Virginia Woolf.)

What didn’t work for me was this: Although her writing is beautiful, I didn’t engage with the author on an emotional level. She handles her triumphs and transformations in a dispassionate style that made it difficult for me to come to know her in a familiar way. That’s a reflection of my limited expectations of memoir, rather than a criticism of her writing.

She definitely ups the ante in the competition for my book-reading attention. She provides elements so often lacking in memoir: rationale and context. A rationale for putting one’s life on paper and a context in which it was lived. This is far more than a journal. This memoir has intellectual heft. My brain was delighted, even though my heart felt a little left out.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Let's Take the Long Way Home, Caldwell's memoir of her friendship with the author, Caroline Knapp, and absolutely loved it. A Strong West Wind is her first book, a memoir of growing up in Amarillo, Texas, attending UT-Austin, and eventually leaving Texas to move North. It's about her relationship with her mother and father, counterculture in 1970s Austin, feminism and the anti-war movement. It's beautifully written, but it's so heavy on description that even though things do happen in the book, it sometimes doesn't feel that way.

[Marlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me quite a while to get into this book with interest. The story of a girl who grew up surrounded by dust storms, cattle ranches and summer lightning and who took refuge from the vastness of the land by retreating into books. She lived through the anguish and fire of the Vietnam years. It is a memoir of culture and history, of fathers and daughters, two world wars and the passionate rebellions of the sixties. She writes about the ways family and place shape the people we become.

[Wendy Coffin Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found myself skimming through parts. The vocabulary confused me. Although, I enjoyed the personal and honest stories of the author's life.

[Sarah Ewald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read several of her more recent memoirs, this one covering her early childhood through her teens and young adulthood. Reminisces her relationship with her father and mother throughout her teenage angst. As she was a literary major, she peppers her story with references to classic novels that I probably should have read, but had not. She touches a lot on the Vietnam war and the emerging women's movement that divided her generation from her parents', and the clashes it brought to her relationship with her father who was a WWII veteran.
What I love most about her memoirs are her word pictures.

"In the mathematics of memory and experience, we know that our perception of time's passage is correlative to biological age: Time blurs into sleepy uniformity when we are children, then accelerates alarmingly as we age--as the length of the present diminishes in relation to the past. Yet there is nothing quite like the brilliant languor of those days on the cusp of adulthood, when the moments are etched with so much color and meaning and hope. The more lurid histories of the 1960s and '70s have gone after the tabloid drama of the casualties suffered instead of the quieter legacy of lasting change. But for a serious girl with too much space and time on her hands, the sheer force of those years gave me a cause as well as a catapult: I was able to see that a life meant something, that you could throw yourself past whatever fate awaited. That you could outlast your father or resist him altogether, even if it broke his heart and made him mute with anger."

Regarding wars, WWII and Vietnam:
"But men have always known. Since the first blood spilled on a bridge became a story (the assassination the begat WWI, my note), and the great folly is not their knowledge but their amnesia--every culture presumes to reinvent the myths. The myths are always connected and give birth to one another, Achilles paving the way for Verdun just as surely as a Southern boy dying on a Pennsylvania plain made somebody enlist a century later. That is the brilliant, sinister power of myth, which propagates as we sleep and dream away the chance for the story to turn out different: One was gives rise to the illusions of the next because we need the mythology to cover the mess. Otherwise we couldn't bear it; too much death and too many lousy, futile endings. It was my passion and ignorance to think that Vietnam invented mayhem, that any war was ever softer or worse than the rest, that young men had to face the murderer inside their own hearts before they died in the mud somewhere crying for their mothers."

"We can't, of course, which is part of the point; no real do-overs in life or death. You can't go back: to un-boarded trains to pristine battlefields before the dawn, to love that ended yesterday in Texas. Instead we have this stupid, lovely chaos, this burden and blessing called experience, the high beam of the past that is supposed to throw light on the future. Instead what you have, if you are lucky, is the next round: the silence at Shiloh, the grasses blowing at Little Bighorn, the oak tree on the father's grave. What we get is the lead weight of understanding, which we have the grace to gravitas."

[Kristine · Rating 2 out of 5]

First half 2 stars, second half 3 stars. But not even 2.5 for the book as a whole.

Being a fellow Texas I just knew I would enjoy this book. Sadly that was not the case.
First half, my impression of the author is that she is totally self-absorbed and someone I would not have chosen as a friend. The constant book and author name-dropping got on my nerves
Second half, my impression of the author changed a bit and I liked her better due to the stories she shares and the love for her family.

There are a few inconsistencies in the book that drove me mad. One being a reference to Diet Coke during her time at the University of Texas. I'm not sure how she remembers all these crazy details but says "Miller took the cigarette from my mouth, handed me my syllabus and a Diet Coke." Her bio states she was an instructor at UT until 1981 and Diet Coke was not unveiled until July 1982. Just an observation that annoyed me.

[PJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chosen by our book group after reading Let's Take the Long Way Home. The strongest writing was in the prologue when Caldwell asks, "How do we become who we are?" It was curious to me that there was no mention of her alcoholism (although there were foreshadowings in her reminiscences about family members). Perhaps because she had dealt with that in Let's Take the Long Way Home? While the bulk of the book focuses on her relationship with her father, I think the parts when she writes about her mother make me wonder if her mother were actually the stronger influence in her life. Her father tended to ignore that she had polio. It was her mother who spent time every day walking their legs up a wall to strengthen them. It was her mother who validated the author's choices once they had been made.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gail Caldwell grew up in the Texas Panhandle and I found this memoir very moving and close to home, perhaps because I lived in the same area for five years and connected with much she experienced and remembered. I'm tempted to call this the best memoir I've read, but I might feel that way because of our geographical connection. However Caldwell is an accomplished and award winning writer having won a Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism for columns she wrote for the Boston Globe.

Caldwell skillfully combines her memories of growing up in Amarillo, with the nature of the unusual land she lived in and also includes family history, and quite a bit of humor. Her memoir is a beautifully written and personal account of a life that is both typical and yet very unique, and her book is a delightful one to read. Sept, 2024

[Toddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her writing awakened so many memories, such similar thoughts about family relationships !! Being from Texas and just a couple of years older than I am, she picked out details of childhood and teenage years that were exactly right. Possum Kingdom Lake ! Her way of evoking the atmosphere of the Amarillo area was powerful. I admired her insights into the years of feminism surging into our culture. Most of all, her characterization of her relationship to her father captivated me. But what about mom ? I was glad when she wrote of getting old enough to realize her mother’s role in creating space for her to find her way.

At first, the use of poetic, super-precise vocabulary was distracting. But after a while, I was deep into her world and it all flowed eloquently.

[Brad Reeves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having grown up south of Amarillo and being a little younger than the author, this book intentionally intrigued me. I did not share the author's hippie rebellion and I also grew up in the only county to consistently vote democratic during our growing up years, so the conservative surroundings she tells about I could not relate to. Nevertheless, it was good to the experience of someone from that area and era. It was a good read and well written.

[Kahy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Since I grew up in West Texas, I could really relate to the landscape, the culture, and the era in which the author grew up. The stories were priceless and the author's down-to-earth, honest writing drew me in. I wish I would have highlighted or jotted down some of her most memorable and beautiful lines; guess I'll just have to reread the book again!

[Hank Pharis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed this because I was growing up in TX at the same time and remember many of the things the author discusses. I did not grow up in a small town but visited a couple of them every Summer to see my Dad's family. The author and I however took very different directions with our lives but it was interesting to hear her experiences.

[Bill Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting mainly because its a memoir of a person from Texas about my own age. Growing up in Amarillo with Texan parents, liberal politics in the LBJ era, Texas Tech and Austin in the late sixties. Lots of name dropping of books and people. Ends about the time she drops out of PhD program at UT and heads to Boston to become a book reviewer at a newspaper.

[Sarah Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great about Texas and life.


I laughed out loud at some of the Texas customs and sayings, so familiar. As was having to leave to find your own way. I wanted more story, but the book was insightful and well worth the time. Laughed, teared up, winced. Maybe should have given it a five since what I really wanted was more.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately I agree with the reviews that say the number of references she crammed in here makes it feel like she's trying to flex how well read and intelligent she is - I understood nearly all of the things she referenced, so it's not me projecting some kind of insecurity, it was just. so. much. and felt like she was trying to pad her word count. The poison for Kuzco. Kuzco's poison.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a while to get used to her writing style, but once I did I loved it. The literary references in many cases left me searching Wikipedia for answers. The author is a few years younger than I am, but I went through some of the same turmoil as I came of age during the Vietnam War.

[Winnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brilliantly and beautifully written memoir. This was one of my daily “Book Bub” offers for $1.99 on my Kindle. I decided to read it because she and I are roughly the same age and we both have a love of reading – and that’s about all we have in common. She has certainly led an adventurous life.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the intelligence with which this book is written, and I loved that I could relate to so much of it since I’m about the same age as the author. But… while I appreciated many of the literary references, with which the book is replete, I found others unfamiliar and distracting.

[Jean Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story that flows easily and keeps you interested in the growing up of this woman, the ups and downs of her life and most of all for me the picture she draws of her parents.

[Ranette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having lived through the 60's, I found this book about the same time period in Texas devoid of depth, and flaccid.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

Caldwell's mastery with words leaves me speechless. I will save my much loved copy and have placed it on my shelf next to Caroline Knapp's The Merry Recluse. All is as it should be.

[D'anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gail Caldwell has written a very intriguing book about coming of age at such a turbulent time in our country. She is an inspiration to all women.

[Norma Hill]

although I enjoyed parts of this book, I cannot say I loved it. Actually I read it in between other books as I did want to finish it but not enough to plough through all at once.