STANDING UP TO THE ROCK

By cradling her otherwise commonplace family memoir within a poignant, reflective account of homestead survival and rugged individuality along the Snake River of Idaho, freelance writer Freeman-Toole invests it with a useful measure of regional appeal for readers interested in the psychic landscape of the wilderness Northwest. The most interesting bits of the book portray pioneering patriarch Dooley Burns, now in his 80s, his earthy, somewhat taciturn, always capable daughter, Liz, and their obviously cherished life running cattle on the last privately owned ranch in the river's tourist- and dam-besieged Hells Canyon region. Less compelling are the rather forced parallels the author draws between her own family's scattered roots and offshoots, and the much more settled history of the hardscrabble ranching holdouts, whose stubborn self-reliance epitomizes what old-time Idahoans celebrate as "standing up to the rock." Freeman-Toole's account of traveling with her dying father to visit his dead mother's Alaskan haunts is moving, and her ruminations on the differences between her California years and her near-decade immersion in Idaho's culture and environment are interesting enough. But when she describes daily life on the Burns ranch, the book truly comes into focus. Her learning curve as a pitch-in visitor to the ranch is steep; she herds cattle and witnesses branding, castration, often difficult births, sometimes messy deaths. Her reward: discovering the beauty at first masked by hellish summer heat and numbing winter isolation. 16 b&w photos. (Oct.)