Book Review: The Tigers of Lents

The Tigers of Lents
by Mark Pomeroy
University of Iowa Press (2024)
pp 225

Author Mark Pomeroy does a fine job of capturing the saga of a family living in Lents, Oregon. These are real people grappling with real problems in a world where everything has been stacked against them. The family members belong to an invisible economic class—the working poor.

The mother Melanie works double-shifts at Fred Meyer just to make ends meet. The three daughters struggle in school and in life. Their father is serving time in prison. Sara, the oldest of the three daughters, is given the opportunity to break the working-poor-cycle when she is offered a sports scholarship to the University of Portland. We feel her struggle when she shines on the soccer field but is always comparing herself to more privileged students, and feeling inadequate.

The author has done a fine job of getting into the head of adolescent females who are bravely trying to find their own place in the world. The descriptions of their physical environment, their culture, and their mindset are compelling, vivid and unforgettable. I didn’t know Lents, Oregon, but I do now.

My only objection to the story is the mother’s out of wedlock pregnancy, bearing a son “Adam,” is never satisfactorily explained. Melanie is already overwhelmed by her burdens and unable to raise her three daughters. It is not clear why she would have another child, especially during a time when pro-choice options were easily accessible. And when the youngest sister Rachel becomes pregnant by her meth-addicted boyfriend, who threatens to kill her for having a kid, she chooses to have the child.

For both mother and daughter, the option of not terminating the pregnancy is never hinted or discussed. There are no moral, ethical, or religious reasons underlying their decisions. Adam ends up being raised by his sisters, not his mother. He’s one more unfair responsibility foisted upon the three young girls who are already being beaten by life. Sixteen-year-old Rachel’s baby Ben is handed off to her grandparents for caretaking, so she can complete high school. And that seems too easy.  

This author has done a good job of making readers see a world where the working poor do not triumph over life or themselves. Working poor drudgery is a never ending cycle, where people listen to the thump of a washing machine, while fretting about the high cost of the light bill and boiling another package of hot dogs for dinner.