Downstream: Bestemor & Me

In 1999 Vangie Bergum and her husband purchased five acres along the Salmo River in the midst of British Columbia's Selkirk Mountains, near the town of Ymir. Their new property had seen a tragedy a few years before—the murder of a child, and the suicide of a father. The deaths on this land mirrored the 1929 deaths of Bergum's own grandmother, her Bestemor (Norwegian), her young aunts, and her grandfather's part in it. Downstream tells the story of the silence that surrounded her family's tragic event, a silence that left her with no skin, no protection against its sorrow and shame. Living in her Ymir home near a mountain river and surrounded by trees, animals and birds, Vangie Bergum, through training for marathons and critique of her own life growing up in the Lutheran Church, addresses the generational pain and loss that shadowed her life. In poetic language Bergum provides moments that that can lift readers into understanding, recognition and empathy for her powerful story.