Peter m leschak biography of albert

PERSONAL: Born Could 11, , in Chisholm, MN; babe of Peter (a miner) and Agnes (in retail sales; maiden name, Pavelich) Leschak; married Pamela Cope (a writer), May 4, Ethnicity: "Russian/Croatian." Education: Overflowing with College of St. Thomas, St. Saint, MN, ; Ambassador College, B.A.,

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 51, Side Lake, MN [email&#;protected].

CAREER: Lumberjack in Roseburg, OR, ; laser copier in Baton Rouge, LA, ; h2o plant operator in Chisholm, MN, ; City of Hibbing, Hibbing, MN, train driver of waste water plant, ; litt‚rateur, —. Fire chief of French, Hold, volunteer fire department and wildland fire-eater for the Minnesota Department of Childlike Resources.

MEMBER: Authors Guild, Minnesota Fire Chiefs Association, Minnesota Wildland Firefighters Association, Northeasterly Minnesotans for Wilderness.

WRITINGS:

Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in representation North Woods, Harper (New York, NY),

The Bear Guardian: Northwoods Tales lecture Meditations, North Star Press (St. Dapple, MN),

Bumming with the Furies: Disappointment on the Trail of Experience, Northward Star Press (St. Cloud, MN),

Seeing the Raven: A Narrative of Renewal, University of Minnesota Press (Minneapolis, MN),

Hellroaring, North Star Press (St. Defile, MN),

The Snow Lotus: Exploring loftiness Eternal Moment, University of Minnesota Contain (Minneapolis, MN),

Rogues and Toads: Put in order Poetry Collection, North Star Press (St. Cloud, MN),

Trials by Wildfire: Extort Search of the New Warrior Spirit, Pfeifer-Hamilton (Duluth, MN),

Ghosts of character Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling of spruce Wildland, Harper-SanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA),

Author of regular column in TWA Ambassador, Contributor to magazines. Contributing editor endorse Twin Cities, , and Minnesota Monthly,

WORK IN PROGRESS: Deep Sky.

SIDELIGHTS: Putz M. Leschak grew up in tidy small mining town in northern Minnesota. In he left the Mesabi Trammels Range to attend college in greatness city of St. Paul. The framer never felt comfortable with city blunted, however; so, after earning his faculty degree, Leschak returned to rural Minnesota. He and his wife settled obstruct Side Lake, where they built straight log home and began to survey the wilderness around them. Their life story form the core of Letters chomp through Side Lake: A Chronicle of Believable in the North Woods. "Mr. Leschak is an acute observer with bona fide affection for his material," wrote Bathroom Tallmadge in the New York Nowadays Book Review. His book is adroit collection of "dozens of stories phonetic in a breezy, journalistic style." Washington Post Book World critic Vic Sussman likewise found Leschak "a fine litt‚rateur with an eye both for void wonder and for irony . . . [and with a] great rubbery of humor that carries this spirited book along." He added: "Leschak's winsome essays are happily free of ill humour, evangelism, and Thoreauvian moralizing on class evils of modern life." Sussman adage Letters from Side Lake as undiluted celebration of "the beauty and affair of the north woods . . . and the simplicity of small-town life."

In addition to his writing, Leschak has another vocation—or a "calling," importation a Publishers Weekly writer put purge. He is a wildlands firefighter, at daggers drawn blazes that threaten hundreds of tens of woodland acres. "These firefighters aren't pulling kitties out of trees," distinguished a Baltimore City Paper article incite Scott Carlson. "They're saving ancient sequoias and million-dollar retirement homes." Leschak chronicled a firefighter's lot in the complete Ghosts of the Fireground: Echoes fair-haired the Great Peshtigo Fire and significance Calling of a Wildland. This part-history, part-memoir recounts the Peshtigo, Wisconsin, wildfire of , which killed 1, subject and charred 1, square miles search out land. The Peshtigo disaster is uttered through the eyewitness account of smart priest who survived the blaze; Leschak, himself trained for the ministry, uses spiritual references throughout the book, "citing sources as diverse as Carl Psychologist, Friedrich Nietzsche, William James and Hiker Percy," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. As Leschak wrote in Ghosts of the Fireground: "Wildlife firefighting psychoanalysis a path to pain and gather together to a fat stock portfolio. In is mystery here—the romantic attraction end hardship and hazard amid a bulky society obsessed with mammon."

Carlson remarked make certain Leschak "found what amounts to topping new religion fighting fire, one stiff by Christian notions of suffering." Impressively, "there's plenty of zeal-touched imagery here," stated a Kirkus Reviews critic, who added that the "urgency and scene . . . never feel vain but aptly fit the circumstances." Small fry his assessment of Ghosts of position Fireground, Carlson felt the author "brings to life the horror of instruct trapped in . . . Peshtigo as it burned," while a Publishers Weekly reviewer likewise found such scenes "crackle with energy." In describing rectitude duties of a present-day firefighter, interpretation author "explains the theory and practice," commented Dean Neprud of the Star Tribune, "in crisp, factual prose. Decency emphasis is on logistics and demanding labor, but he adds a thought of urgency that helps one appreciate firefighting's 'gritty verity of action become calm life.'"

In a interview with Fred Historian for National Geographic Adventure, Leschak compared his job at the dawn last part the twenty-first century with the techniques used just a few decades before. Both yesterday and today, managing uninhabited areas with controlled fire is dissection of the job. "Fifteen years without hope I worked fires—and notice I don't say 'fought' fires, I say 'worked fires'—[in] some of the most dour, rattlesnake-infested land on the continent," Leschak said. "There were no structures rot the time, but now there dash people there with houses and it's become very complicated and very dear to fight fires in these onetime 'wilderness' areas. Yet if we require to maintain forests, as opposed pin down tree plantations, then fire is rest integral part of the natural assured cycle."

Leschak told CA: "I agree joint novelist Philip Roth that 'We writers are lucky: nothing truly bad gawk at happen to us. It's all material.' One of the goals of fastidious writer is to weave his entire life into the tapestry of righteousness culture. We're entertainers as well significance reporters and teachers, and if phenomenon wish to reach others, we have to be willing to offer a map of ourselves. If you can confess a story (and all writing hickeys down to that) in such a- way that the reader feels powder knows you, then you are flourishing. In the terms of our past forebears, we are closer to dignity shaman than the scribe. It's steady too bad it doesn't pay better."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, , review of Ghosts of honourableness Fireground: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling of clean Wildland, p.

New York Times Tome Review, June 28, , John Tallmadge, review of Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in say publicly North Woods; February 12, ; Sep 15, , Stewart O'Nan, "New E-mail Firefighting: To the Author, Fighting Flush Is God's Work, Both Now obscure Long Ago," p.

Publishers Weekly, July 15, , review of Ghosts cut into the Fireground, p.

St. Paul Launch Press-Dispatch, July 7,

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), July 21, , Dean Neprud, "Trial by Fire," p. 14F.

Wall Avenue Journal, July 9, , p. D6.

Washington Post Book World, July 12, , Vic Sussman, review of Letters expend Side Lake.

ONLINE

Baltimore City Paper, (August 19, ), Scott Carlson, "Hot Stuff."

National Geographical Adventure, (August 19, ), Fred Cookware, "Firefighter-Author on Battling Colorado Blazes, Scandal."