“rough house is an intensely moving and vivid story of author Tina Ontiveros’ childhood in poverty-stricken small towns and logging camps of the Pacific Northwest during the ’70s and ’80s. Throughout her story, Ontiveros shares poignant memories of a heartrending and complex relationship with her volatile father as she earnestly tries to come to terms with the impact these experiences have had on who she is and who she is to become. Her loss and grief seem insurmountable at times, but her resolve and hope for a better future shine through. rough house is a gripping and emotional journey that should not be missed.”
— Jennifer Green, Green Bean Books, Portland, OR
“The story of Tina Ontiveros’ childhood with her family, both before and after her parents divorced, is one of just barely scraping by — but in such a way that her life can inspire envy as well as sorrow. Her lumberjack dad’s outsized personality and way of life is at once riveting, horrifying, and occasionally beautiful, and Ontiveros conveys this masterfully. Her depiction of and feeling for the rich Northwest outdoors is as affecting as that of her youth and coming of age in this world.”
— Georgiana Blomberg, Magnolia's Bookstore, Seattle, WA
Tina Ontiveros was born into timber on both sides of the family. Her mother spent summers driving logging trucks for her family’s operation, and her father was the son of an itinerant logger, raised in a variety of lumber towns, as Tina herself would be.
A story of growing up in turmoil, rough house recounts a childhood divided between a charming, mercurial, abusive father in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and a mother struggling with small-town poverty. It is also a story of generational trauma, especially for the women—a story of violent men and societal restrictions, of children not always chosen and frequently raised alone.
Ontiveros’s father, Loyd, looms large. Reflecting on his death and long absence from her life, she writes, “I had this ridiculous hope that I would get to enjoy a functional relationship with my father, on my own terms, now that I was an adult.” In searingly honest, straightforward prose, rough house is her attempt to carve out this relationship, to understand her father and her family from an adult perspective.
While some elements of Ontiveros’s story are universal, others are indelibly grounded in the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest at the end of the twentieth century, as the lumber industry shifted and contracted. Tracing her childhood through the working-class towns and forests of Washington and Oregon, Ontiveros explores themes of love and loss, parents and children, and her own journey to a different kind of adulthood.
