Applegater Summer 2016
5
The Applegater bids a fond farewell
to Julie Hoskins
For more than three years, Julie Hoskins wrote book reviews for the
Applegater. She frequently chose abstruse books to review, which pleased
us and hopefully our readers, too. In Julie’s honor, Joan Peterson reviews
Julie’s own book, She Caves to Conquer, and Julie’s poem, Applegate Orange,
appears below.
We reach out to Julie’s family and friends with our sincerest condolences.
We will miss her intelligence, her style, and her thoughtful prose.
Applegater Board of Directors
Julia Marie Helm Hoskins
July 7, 1942 - February 25, 2016
Artist, writer, world traveler
J ulie Hoskins was born in Red
Willow County, Nebraska, to Paul
and Alice Helm, a farmer and a school
teacher. Julie completed her last two years
of high school in Reedsport, Oregon,
where she met her husband-to-be shortly
after she graduated.
In 1962, after a year at Colorado
State College, Julie married US Air Force
Second Lieutenant Don Hoskins at
McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento,
California. They spent the next 20 years
traveling to various duty assignments.
When their daughter, Angie, and son,
Michael, were small, the family was
posted to Izmir, Turkey, for two years,
where Don was assigned to NATO.
They developed a lifelong attachment to
Turkey and its people.
Upon their return to the States,
they lived in Mississippi, New York, and
New Jersey, where Julie completed her
degree in English at Rutgers University.
She thoroughly enjoyed Rutgers and
excelled in all of her classes. Her favorite
course was an upper-division class on
Irish writer James Joyce; her greatest
class project was a 48-page explanation
She Caves to Conquer
Julia Helm (Hoskins)
What a generous
surprise to open
the mysterious
cover of Julia
Helm’s ( Julie
H o s k i n s’s )
novel, She Caves
to Conquer, and
find not a book
on spelunking, but
a fascinating story about life in the
Midwest and southern Turkey. The cover
of the book is somewhat spooky: a stack
of old, hardbound books cut through
by an ancient cave carved out of Roman
architecture. Don’t let this fool you!
At the beginning of the book,
character Iris Tree reveals something
about the author: “I am always called
to the still unknown—to the road that
leads on—the stranger at the inn—the
tune heard ’round the corner.” This is a
writer who delves into the essences of life
and to the true nature of what makes us
human beings.
The main character, Ardis, a woman
in her late teens or early twenties, is living
in southern Turkey as a tutor of English
to a family of three teenage children, two
girls and one boy. She is called back to
her original home in Freedom County in
of seven pages from Joyce’s difficult last
novel, Finnegans Wake.
From New Jersey the Hoskins
moved to Toronto, Canada, where Don
attended the Canadian Forces Command
and Staff College, then to Ottawa, where
Julie took up macramé. The family
spent many weekends in the Canadian
wilderness collecting “perfect” sticks for
perches for the hundreds of macramé
owls that Julie made and sold in local
art shops. The kids long remembered
returning from those weekend outings
buried beneath sticks in the back seat of
a small Fiat coupe. Julie’s wall hangings
won prizes at several art exhibits.
The Hoskins family spent the final
four years of Don’s military career in
Hawaii, where Julie sold real estate and
served as a substitute teacher.
In 1982, after 20 years, Don retired
from the US Air Force and went to
work for Pacific Gas & Electric in San
Francisco. They bought a home in Marin
County, thinking they would stay there
the rest of their lives. Julie had a great job
in downtown San Francisco as secretary
for the State of California Board of Pilot
Commissioners. She was normally the
only one in her office, and she often had
time to visit her favorite art shops and
stores over her lunch period.
Although the Hoskinses appreciated
the San Francisco Bay Area, they decided
to search for riverfront property. Because
Julie had long enjoyed the Oregon
Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, they
decided on 15 acres on the Applegate
River. After Julie and Don retired in
1995, they designed and built their
dream home on this land.
Julie now had time to immerse
herself in books, art, and flowers. The
house began filling with books, several
thousand of which she left behind. Her
iris garden grew to contain a hundred or
more varieties.
With their house completed, they
began to travel with at least one annual
overseas trip. Julie especially loved
Ireland and the many African countries
they visited, but her favorite trips were to
Norway, where they met and fell in love
with Don’s relatives.
Early in her marriage, Julie began
writing down notes about experiences,
stories she had heard, and articles that
she found particularly interesting.
Finally, in 2013, at the urging of her
daughter, she put these notes together
and published her book, She Caves to
Conquer. She enjoyed giving talks about
her book to various groups. Julie found
another outlet for her writing and
began submitting book reviews to the
Applegater. Her reviews, frequently on
esoteric books, prompted a number of
readers to purchase new dictionaries.
BOOK REVIEW
the Midwest upon the death of her Aunt
Cora, the woman who, along with Cora’s
sister, Aunt Theda, raised Ardis. As it
turns out, Ardis’s mother and father had
died when she was a young girl, and her
growing-up years were spent on the old
homestead with the two aunts.
Ardis’s return to Freedom County
brings up memories from her childhood
as she explores the homestead house that
was soon to be burned to the ground. She
reflects on the solace she found in books
and how they influenced her as she grew
into adulthood. We also learn of Ardis’s
first romance with a young man and their
escape to the Rocky Mountains together.
Julia Helm brings this affair to life with
her precise language: “That night the
words left the page. There were no pages.”
Ardis meets a man called Osman
through her work in a museum. He
invites her to go to Turkey to work as a
tutor for a family in Cappadocia. This
begins another saga of events with the
Turkish people, both in the family she
works for and within the community.
The bedroom that Ardis shares with
the two young girls is adjacent to a
mysterious cave (many of the houses in
the village are built out of caves in the
hillside), where rugs and other items are
stored. This area remains off-base for
the young teenagers in
the house, but Ardis is
more than curious as to what that cave
contains. Later we learn that the father of
the Turkish family is a smuggler.
Details of life in the village are more
than descriptive as we learn of the forced
marriage of a 12-year-old girl to an older
man. The author relates the screams of
the girl in the night and how the groom
“strutted around the cay house, bragging
about his strength and virility.” Ardis
leaves Cappadocia and travels to the
home village of the poet Rumi, where she
observes the whirling Dervish in prayer
dances. Details of the scenes are vivid
and colorful.
Ardis’s father died in a fire caused
by her mother, who was having an
affair with one of the workmen who
helped on the homestead. Her mother
was institutionalized, and when Ardis
returns to Freedom County after her
aunt’s funeral, she visits her mother in
Heinlitz, a small town outside her home
town. Her mother barely recognizes her.
Ardis is faced with the reality that there
is no going back. She conquers her grief.
The novel ends with a joyful, almost
accidental visit to Woodstock, where
Ardis dances and sings with a new brand
of people. “Ardis suddenly wants, after all
Julie’s painting, “A Raven in Boots,” was
influenced by Brian Doyle’s book, Mink River.
Perhaps the best of her artwork is
her final painting, a reproduction that
might be called “A Raven in Boots,”
prompted in part by Mink River, written
by Brian Doyle, her favorite living
author. Julie and Don attended Brian’s
talks whenever he appeared in southern
Oregon and considered themselves to
be his best groupies. She also created
and supplied several local shops with
beautiful, unique pieces of jewelry.
Julie was preceded in death by her
son, Mike, who died in 2015. Her son’s
death triggered a depression that she
could not bear. She is survived by Don,
her husband of 54 years; daughter Angie
Killian, granddaughter Jessica Killian,
and grandson Matt Killian of Bigfork,
Montana; and her son’s daughters,
Isabella and Emma Lee Hoskins, of
Bourbonnais, Illinois.
“ J
ulie was vibrant and brilliant
and astute and absorbed by stories and
their power to bring people together...
She had a smile bigger than a county,
the brightest startling socks, and a wry
dry sense of humor I will miss the rest
of my life. The world is dimmer without
her light.”
—Brian Doyle, author, Mink River
this time and more than anything, to be
a part of her own place and community.”
The last chapter in the novel begins
with a quote from Rumi: “There is a
community of the spirit. Join it, and
feel the delight of walking in the noisy
street, and being the noise.” Julia Helm
discovers this spirit of community in her
novel, She Caves to Conquer.
Joan Peterson
541-846-6988
Applegate Orange
Julie Hoskins
Demand, demand, every year they come.
Tap tapping at my window now; they’re
back.
Sun kissed, Icteridae are here. What fun!
Like clockwork, orange, brilliant darts
of black,
Orioles, a pair, peck at my glass.
They’ve learned I’ll give them string. They
make a row.
I cut and fray the line. They give no pass.
They won’t forego. They want attention
now!
They’ve learned to hang that nest so high
it mocks
Marauding furry predators they foil
With nests like woven pliant swinging
socks.
They know to interweave the cord, such
toil.
How long—eons—for them to learn
these things?
Such joy for me; I just provide the strings.
