Balsamroot

Mary Clearman Blew's first memoir, All But the Waltz, sealed her renown as a "brave, bone-honest" writer (Ivan Doig, The Washington Post) of "prose with a shining edge" (The New York Times Book Review). Now she focuses on some of the women she so memorably introduced in that book - above all, on her favorite aunt, Imogene, whose early struggle for independence and new struggle with age and dementia focus Blew's own feelings about living, about making choices, and about growing older. Melding past and present into a moving narrative, Mary Clearman Blew imaginatively recreates the dry, dusty,…