By David Krogh
When fiction looks like reality and reality becomes fiction is one way to describe The Tigers of Lents by Portland author Mark Pomeroy. The story occurs over a two-year period starting in 2010 and takes place in the Lents neighborhood at the time when Marshall High School still functioned as a high school and a Fred Meyer store was still operating at the corner of SE 82nd Ave. and Foster Rd. Lents back then was a mixture of people and classes, many of whom were either in poverty or close to it. And many others were just having a rough time with life in general.
The story focuses on a splintered family called the Garrisons. Each has a unique role, challenges and important interactions with each other and the real world. The principle character is a girl named Sara who is an avid soccer player and a member of Marshall’s girls soccer team. She is subsequently recruited by a University of Portland (UP) coach to play on UP’s women’s soccer team. This situation figures greatly into the name of the book according to the author. “There’s a scene where the UP coach shows the players some video clips of the likes of Christine Sinclair and Megan Rapinoe. He tells them he wants to show them the difference between playing like a house cat and playing like a tiger. The tiger image also connects with the inner character of each of the Garrisons. They’re survivors.”
But could the Garrisons be considered dysfunctional? Pomeroy suggests, “I wouldn’t call the Garrisons dysfunctional, though they’re certainly challenged. They face many challenges, some of which are self-inflicted of course.” And the many challenges are what help to make this an interesting story.
The book developed in the spring of 2011, when Pomeroy was the last writer in residence at Marshall High School. “Over the course of nearly 30 years, I’ve taught in every high school in PPS. I’ve worked with thousands of kids, many of whom live in the other Portland not found on the pages of hip magazines,” explained Pomeroy, who himself lived for a time close to poverty. During his time teaching at Marshall, he was able to observe poverty up close and how it affected the students he taught. Poverty is “a fluid state that many people don’t fully understand. As a writer, as someone who tries to pay close attention, and as someone who has experienced a crash of worlds often, I’m always aware of class distinctions.”
Pomeroy’s students were a contributing factor to the story form for his book. “As for initial seed ideas for The Tigers of Lents, I had a student in one of my classes at Marshall who had a strong personality and played soccer. She also lived on poverty’s edge and wrote about that state of being, as did many other students. Each of those character elements connected with parts of my own life and family experiences. The other seed ideas came from my own life, from my years of playing soccer to the years of teaching and coaching at schools and community centers all around Portland, and of course my imagination.”
The Tigers of Lents is easy to read and the action is interesting and well connected between the various persons portrayed. At first, it may seem like a challenge to keep all the names of the Garrisons straight and what their specific involvements are. But by the middle of the book one can see just how well the interactions are meshing.
Of especial interest is the factual use of geographic references. For example, Marshall High School, the Foster Rd. Fred Meyer and the former New Copper Penny, are all accurately referenced, allowing readers familiar with the area at the time to clearly visualize where the characters and their activities are located. The Garrison’s grandparents live in Brightwood, near Mt. Hood, and interestingly enough, the author has spent considerable time in Brightwood at his own grandparents’ home there.
In summation, The Tigers of Lents is an interesting tale of fiction intermixed with reality and locations which are easy for locals to relate to. It is hard to put such a book down.
The Tigers of Lents was published by and is available from the University of Iowa Press at uipress.uiowa.edu/books/tigers-lents. This is the second novel Pomeroy has written; his first was The Brightwood Stillness, published in 2014 by Oregon State University Press. Both books are available locally at Powell’s Books and via the author’s website, mpomeroy.com.
The author will be doing a reading at the University of Portland Wednesday, October 30, from 5-6 pm, in the Brian Doyle Auditorium. For additional information on the author, see his website.
Author Mark Pomeroy. Photo by John Davenport.
