Temperance Creek

A Memoir

By: Pamela Royes, Teresa Jordan

Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley

In the early 70s, some of us were shot like stars from our parents' homes. This was an act of nature, bigger than ourselves. In the austere beauty and natural reality of Hell's Canyon of Eastern Oregon, 100 miles from pavement, Pam, unable to identify with her parent's world and looking for deeper pathways has a chance encounter with returning Vietnam warrior Skip Royes.

Skip, looking for a bridge from survival back to connection, introduces Pam to the vanishing culture of the wandering shepherd and together they embark on a four-year sojourn into the wilderness. From the back of a horse, Pam leads her packstring of listeners from overlook to water crossing, down trails 2,000 years old, and from the vantages she chooses for us, we feel the edges of our own experiences. It is a memoir of falling in love with a place and a man and the price extracted for that love.

Written with deep lyricism, Temperance Creek is a work of haunting beauty, fresh and irreverent and rooted in the grit and pleasure of daily life. This is Pam's story, but the courage and truth in the telling is part of our human experience. Seen through a slower more primary mirror, one not so crowded with objectivity, Pam's memoir, is a kind of home-coming, a family reunion for shooting stars.

©2016 Pamela Royes; foreword copyright 2016 by Teresa Jordan (P)2017 Tantor

Living in nature

This is an amazing story where a young couple live along the snake river and keep track of a herd of sheep, they nearly live off the land and keep watch over the sheep. It is amazing how they live and love their freedom.. They have children and make their life work out in the elements of nature.

Great story!

Beautiful story and so well told. Wonderful descriptions. Didn’t like the narration however and suggest reading it instead.

A lovely transportive reminiscence.

A wonderful reminiscence about about a time not far in the past, full of a certain kind of innocence and freedom lost to us now. It fills me with nostalgia and ennui. A lovely, transportive story.

Visually intriguing in my mind

I loved the story. But the narrator was flat and monotone. Which took away from the story, Because descriptively Pam Royce took you there with every bump and squeak of the saddle to the sourdough cakes. I read the book previously and decided to listen to someone else read it. Somethings are just better left alone.

Great story of life in Eastern Oregon

I had heard of this book from a colleague. As a hobby sheep farmer and someone who loves the history of farmers and herders in Oregon, this memoir sounded perfect. The story is wholesome and entertaining. What an experience these folks had! My
Only hold up was I didn’t like the narrators voice and cadence- at times it was robotic.