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What Readers Are Saying About

SOMETIMES I WAKE UP AND THINK I’M STILL IN NEBRASKA

The novel called “Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I’m Still in Nebraska,” authored by Dusty Dowse, is a fine read: It really moves the reader along, via a combination of imagination, intelligence, & humor. One is tempted to describe that work as picaresque (a good thing!); shades of “The Sotweed Factor.” And even though I never met Mr. Barth, the author of that work, I should mention that I have long known Dusty D. Accordingly, I could not help discerning certain autobiographical elements distributed through his book: an extra good thing, owing to the author’s rich, full, and interesting life. And even though most readers would not know, or care about that feature of the novel, the key factor is that they are in for a fine reading experience if they opt to acquire, then delve into it, which they should do.

Jeffrey Hall, Ph.D.

Nobel Laureate and author of The Stand of the U.S. Army at Gettysburg

Dusty Dowse is a Renaissance-type of man who has a vast range of interests and knowledge. He is not only an author, but also a professor emeritus in biology, a researcher in fields that would be considered esoteric, a Zen baker, and a mountain man. His recently published book, “Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I’m Still in Nebraska,” is fiction, but so compelling in the vivid and detailed descriptions of the protagonist, a leading scientist named Larry Vintner, and one other main character, I can’t help but wonder if each of those characters represents an aspect of the author. You will be drawn in by the stories which make the book hard to put down.

Erica M. Elliott, MD

Author, speaker, mountaineer, and Medical Doctor.  Her current work is From Mountains to Medicine-Scaling the Heights in Search of my Calling.

The best compliment for any writer is that he told a good story, and it was based on his own life. Dusty Dowse is twice blessed; he lived an original life and came up with an even more original story. His résumé is rich and long and makes a worthy template for Larry, the protagonist of his novel, “Sometimes I Wake Up And Think I’m Still In Nebraska.” Larry is a professor of some arcane branch of computer science at an unnamed university in Cambridge, Mass., an unlikely destination for a man who started out oiling in the logging industry of the northern Catskills in Upper New York State. The title has nothing to do with either location but plenty to do with the author and his protagonist and their shared appetite for a pithy line and vivid cultural references cached throughout the narrative like Easter eggs. The presence that looms over everything is the mystique of the old growth forest and its eerie natural phenomena, some explicable, some inexplicable. One of these is a magnificent ash tree that casts its own spell over all who see it and becomes the locus for a violent clash between a youthful Larry, who wants to save it and his employer, Jimmy, who wants to cut it down. Jimmy is a crude, hard drinking backwoods brawler and the fight between them ends with him fleeing into the deep woods believing he has killed Larry. But Larry survives and both men are thrust into their own personal quest for the meaning of what brought them to such a terrible moment. As he pursues a successful career in academia Larry is constantly drawn back to the mountains by his love of climbing, the solace of the forest and the lifelong bonds he forged with those who worked in the woods. When Larry calls on an old friend, Eban, who is splitting wood in the barn the two fit wordlessly into a familiar routine, Larry feeding Eban the rough chunks of wood while Eban works the splitter, a homebuilt tractor driven contraption impressive in its efficiency and durability. The authenticity of the moment is so persuasive you can almost smell the fresh split wood. There are many such moments because Dusty lived them, and the book is richer for them. Every good story needs a compelling denouement and Dusty has come up with a beauty. I won’t spoil it here but when the two old combatants meet again, as we know they must, the resolution is as ingenious.as it is astounding. I will say only that Dusty’s record as a professor of Biology and Mathematics at UMaine-Orono imbues the metaphysical with the practical in a way that satisfies intellectually and emotionally. I was left wanting more.

Paul Mann

Author of Season of the Monsoon, winner of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year award.

Sometimes I Wake Up and Think I'm Still in Nebraska is a classic—a hardcore underground working-class novel somewhat reminiscent of nineteenth-century novelist Thomas Hardy with a touch of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, and Annie Proulx, but more blue-collar and engine-and-motor-savvy. It’s a rare novel that can teach you about Johann Sebastian Bach’s music and how machines work at the same time.

Richard Grossinger, Ph.D.

Curator of Sacred Planet Books at Inner Traditions, and author of Bottoming Out the Universe: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing.

Okay, boomers. This is a story for you. 

It’s about two men, casual friends who are also loggers: one the boss, the other his employee. They’ve followed different paths to this place in their lives. One day on the job they find themselves faced with events they can’t explain. A moment of sudden, jarring violence scatters them into the wide world again, with more questions than ever.

Dusty takes us along their journey through insights and experiences of a life overlapping two centuries. The dialogue is real; the experiences, locations and events of recent decades are familiar to any of us that have lived through them. The story doesn’t answer every question raised or tie up every loose end – just like life. It does give the reader much to think about. And that is, in itself, a rare and wonderful thing.

Diane Genthner

Diane Genthner has 20+ years’ experience as a trade book buyer at B Dalton and the UMaine Bookstore, and also holds a MA in English. She writes fiction privately as well.

Not often does a longtime friend and colleague from an academic science department ask you to read his novel. Dipping in, I quickly had a pretty good idea that it would be a memoir or at least draw heavily on the author’s experiences in New York and New England, and for myself and longtime friends of his, put together some pieces of the puzzle that is Dusty Dowse. Reminiscence or novel, it would be a good story for other readers as well, with its blend of historical facts and quirks of human nature.

The book follows the employments and career of its central character, Larry Vintner. He is presented as a top-notch international climate scientist but who in some respects is a throwback to a time when science was emerging from natural philosophy as a complement to art in understanding the natural world. Larry’s “sense of trees” and sensibility to flow allowed him to “hear them talking in the forest floor.” But this sense of mysticism and enchantment is blended with scientific discussions of non-equilibrium thermodynamics and heat transfer in self-organizing systems involved in the formation of hurricanes.

Artifactual objects figure throughout the book and give context to the vignettes and the author’s life and likes, beginning with an heirloom mantel clock—“a work of art, composed of exotic woods mixed with honest oak”—and a touchstone for a chronobiologist specializing in the mathematical analysis of biological rhythms and the underpinnings of cardiology. Heavy machinery figures prominently. The hardscrabble reality of rural New York is pervasive. Personal dislikes and annoyances feature in the author’s academic scientists and curmudgeons rural and urban alike. All these factors give the book its personality.

Professor Dowse is versed in crafting scientific publications, with to-the-point descriptions evincing a careful choice of words and a polished style that avoids complicated sentences. Thus, his novel flows well and is eminently readable.

This marvelous book will be of particular interest to those readers of a certain age who recall how the physical and cultural worlds have changed in the past four-plus decades, for better or worse. Academics of various stripes, especially scientists, will enjoy his wry treatment of the familiar politics, culture, and personalities of their domain, but the relevance goes beyond these things. Thoughtful readers will be drawn to reflect on why we are here, where we are headed, and the importance of the relationships that make us human, including our connections with non-humans. Books such as this are good arguments against a voluntary posthuman future, where literature cannot flourish.

Malcolm Shick, Ph.D.

Emeritus Professor of Zoology and Oceanography, University of Maine; a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and author of Where Corals Lie