In the freewheeling memoir, My Steamboat, Dori Duckels DeCamillis revels in the uncommon cold of her Rocky Mountain girlhood--complete with fierce, funny parents, wily siblings, improbably-named classmates, and the feisty menagerie who just happened by. Set in the shadows of postcard-perfect Storm Mountain, her book recounts how the people and place irrevocably shaped her, at the very moment her sleepy little hometown was becoming a big-time resort. Part picaresque parable, part insider travelogue, My Steamboat adroitly spins an endearing coming-of-age tale of love, laughter and growing up, candidly reminding us about the abiding power of place and family.
--Mary Kay Culpepper, journalist and longtime editor, Cooking LIght magazine.
Dori DeCamillis Hails from the Hills
Oh yes, I judge books by their covers. Because books, and book covers, are art to me, and I am attracted to good, vivid, striking art.
So I was hooked at first sight by Dori DeCamillis' memoir, "My Steamboat: A Ski Town Childhood." The luscious, fresh-air inducing bright photo of children playing in the river while the verdant ski slopes wink behind is so inviting...
And then the mud-covered, rough-and-tumble reality of Steamboat residency sets in. From the beginning DeCamillis warns that mountain folk are blunt sometimes, and that her stories, which are so every-day in her mind, may seem surprising or even scandalous to city slickers.
This city slicker wasn't scandalized, but did laugh uproariously at the girl joining her basketball team to moon highway drivers out the tour bus window, at the mother whose language could make light hearts blush, at the genuine sacrilege of naughty pranks during Mass in the town's Catholic parish.
This book has the feel of that friend in your life who tells the funniest stories and you could spend hours just listening, laughing, and wanting more. That's why I couldn't put it down until the last page had been devoured. Enjoy the mountain scenery, cherish this precious portrait of a once-quaint town that has, like so many resorts, been standardized to commercial perfection, smell the pine-scented breezes, and romp with Dori and the Duckels clan up and down Steamboat's mountain playground. Coloradans will feel right at home between these covers, and out-of-towners will rejoice in what we all know is our own slice of paradise.
--Rocky Mountain Authors blog at the Tattered Cover, Denver, CO
If you think you know Steamboat, think again. This story of a ranch town cum ski resort, by a native who knew it all back when, will make you rethink not only Steamboat Springs, Colorado, but that "same small town in each of us," as the songwriter said.
In these pages you will meet a mother with a profanity habit who fling cats into snowbanks and plays sad folk songs on the ukulele; a father who emerges only rarely from his deep silences to laught manically at his own jokes and teach his teenage daughters how to play dirty basketball; townspeople who include lecherous old dudes hanging around the local pool, former race car drivers at the wheel of the scool bus, and history teachers who issue bomb threats.
Dori DeCamillis (nee Duckels) tells of her unique family, peculiar neighbors, and reassuringly American hometown with honesty, grace, and most inportantly humor. A cross between Patrick McManus and Garrison Keillor, DeCamillis gives us a town and cast of characters not soon forgotten.
--Avery Hurt, author of Bullet With Your Name On It
