Struggle on the North Santiam is, most simply, a history of place that offers an insightful look into the dynamics of power on the margins of the North American West. Focusing on Oregon's North Santiam River Canyon, a seemingly "insignificant and powerless" area within the North American West, Bob Reinhardt examines how locals "have in a multitude of ways, out of many motives, and to varying degrees of success tried to exercise limited power over their lives, work, and their community" (3-4). Indeed, communities scattered throughout the fifty-mile forested corridor through which the North Santiam River runs have, to varying degrees, sought to preserve local autonomy in the face of powerful external forces that included larger urban areas within the region, capitalists across the country, politicians and government agencies, and market forces. Reinhardt ultimately contributes to the literature on the history of power in the American West through an analysis of how local perspectives, choices, and actions responded to and interacted with outside interests to reveal how residents "used, benefitted from, and bristled against connections to the outside world" (53).
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