Cowlitz are a Coast Salish group of southwestern Washington who are defined by where they are from, their line of descent, and their level of prestige vis-á-vis other groups along the coast and in the interior. In this book, Darleen Fitzpatrick probes the interconnection between culture and the boundaries that surround it, suggesting that Coast Salish ideology, which centers upon a class/prestige system and a code of ethics, links social structure with culture. These features initiate Cowlitz ethnic boundaries and the development of related cultural signs, which both transmit and communicate Cowlitz collective ethnic identity, as well as salience of ethnicity. Dr. Fitzpatrick provides a modest semiotic analysis of culture that distinguishes the cultural signs Cowlitz expresses, some of which are not attached to the ideology, to help readers understand their meaning.

In My Body Is a Book of Rules, Elissa Washuta corrals the synaptic gymnastics of her teeming bipolar brain, interweaving pop culture with neurobiology and memories of sexual trauma to tell the story of her fight to calm her aching mind and slip beyond the tormenting cycles of memory.

Jean Barman was the recipient of the 2014 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. In French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific Northwest, Jean Barman rewrites the history of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of French Canadians attracted by the fur economy, the indigenous women whose presence in their lives encouraged them to stay, and their descendants. Joined in this distant setting by Quebec paternal origins, the French language, and Catholicism, French Canadians comprised Canadiens from Quebec, Iroquois from the Montreal area, and métis combining Canadien and indigenous descent. For half a century, French Canadians were the largest group of newcomers to this region extending from Oregon and Washington east into Montana and north through British Columbia. Here, they facilitated the early overland crossings, drove the fur economy, initiated non-wholly-indigenous agricultural settlement, eased relations with indigenous peoples, and ensured that, when the region was divided in 1846, the northern half would go to Britain, giving today’s Canada its Pacific shoreline.