Strangely, here we have one autobiography of two people.
One is Hope Jahren of rural Minnesota, daughter of a silent family whose roots were
transplanted from Norway in the 1800s. Her mother was absolute and emotionally distant; her father embedded in his science laboratory at the community college, teaching earth sciences and physics.
After class, Hope and her brothers would spend play-time in this modest lab. It was her father's sanctuary and here he flourished, an alluring prospect for a girl with an incomplete sense of family love, already searching for a thing to plug the gap.
The other is Hope Jahren, a tenured professor in paleobiology at the University of Hawaii with a swag of Fulbright Awards and Investigatory Medals on the back of which she was funded to build the university's respected Isotope Geobiology Laboratories.
Hope Jahren's life to date is laid candidly and in part, intimately, before us. By grit and grapple she demolishes all obstacles on the path to her goal. Her methods are often unorthodox; her appetite for manic amounts of work breathtaking, and, excepting the perennial company of one similarly manic male colleague, her social landscape is
bare. No romance here, but an inspiring account of true friendship. Jahren's narration jogs along at a fit pace; her writing is a lovely piece of construction marred only by unconvincing dialogue.
