Island author explores ‘Deepest Roots’

Published 10:24 am Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Bainbridge Island author Kathleen Alcalá will launch her new book “The Deepest Roots: Finding Food & Community on a Pacific Northwest Island,” at a special debut event at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13 in the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art auditorium.

Alcalá is the author of a short story collection, three novels set in 19th century Mexico and the Southwest, and a collection of essays based on family history. Her work has received the Western States Book Award, the Governor’s Writers Award and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award. She was honored by the national Latino writers group, Con Tinta, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference in 2014 and she was an Island Treasure Award recipient in 2010.

As friends began “going back to the land” at the same time that a health issue emerged, Alcalá set out to re-examine her relationship with food at the most local level.

Remembering her parents, Mexican immigrants who grew up during the Great Depression, and the memory of planting, growing and harvesting fresh food with them as a child, she decided to explore the history of the very island she calls home.

In “The Deepest Roots,” which features the photography of Joel Sackett, Alcalá walks, wades, picks, pokes, digs, cooks and cans, getting to know her neighbors on a much deeper level. Wanting to better understand how we once fed ourselves, and acknowledging that there may be a future in which we could need to do so again, she meets those who experienced the Japanese American internment during World War II, learns the unique histories of the blended Filipino and Native American community, the fishing practices of the descendants of Croatian immigrants, and the Suquamish elder who shares with her the food legacy of the island itself.