My Music Man

by Dede Montgomery

As Dede Montgomery moves through grief to accept of the death of her father, the stories in My Music Man shed light on change, acceptance, and forgiveness amid close personal relationships and Oregon's natural landscapes. The reader is catapulted into autumn on the Willamette’s riverbank in the 1960s with the author and her brothers, where they discover their father's own childhood stories and the intimate relationship he shares with the land. Tales about generations of family weave between time periods, held together by the constancy of place and colored by memories of picking berries and filberts, traveling through the West Linn locks, and swimming in the river on a hot summer day. Montgomery describes small-town life in a school where everyone knows everybody, and how it felt to be an only girl in what often felt like a never-ending sea of boys.

200 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2017

About the author

Dede Montgomery is a 6th generation Oregonian, published author, blogger and retired Safety and Health Professional. She is a thoughtful and introspective author whose work blends personal narrative, historical reflection, and social awareness. Dede often writes with a deep connection to place, particularly the Pacific Northwest. Her storytelling is rooted in a sense of identity, family legacy, and the broader human experience.

Dede writes multiple genres including literary fiction, memoir and non-fiction. Her books include her October 2025 A MAP OF HER OWN, a dual timeline work of contemporary/historical fiction. Other books include FROM FIRST BREATH TO LAST: A STORY ABOUT LOVE, WOMANHOOD, AND AGING (memoir, 2024); HUMANITY'S GRACE ("novel in stories", 2022); THEN, NOW, AND IN-BETWEEN: PLACE, MEMORIES AND LOSS IN OREGON (non-fiction, 2020); BEYOND THE RIPPLES (literary fiction, 2019); and MY MUSIC MAN (memoir, 2017).

She is also a prolific blogger. Learn more at https://dedemontgomery.com.

Reviews

[Margaret Pinard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a cross-stitch of family memories, historical anecdotes, and personal memoir, set in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. I loved hearing about early Oregon pioneers, their triumphs and trials, drives and disappointments. It's especially neat that these characters are mostly relations of the author and she has special source material in diaries and family lore!
The more modern pieces touch on industry, environmentalism, and the growth of Salem and Portland, woven in with the author's own views of this as a young girl. There are also fun family stories of growing up in the unincorporated areas in the 1960s. It's a delightful read and interesting especially for someone living among the ghosts of this person's past.

[Emily Gains · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Music Man is the kind of memoir that sneaks up on you, not because it’s flashy or dramatic, but because it’s rooted so deeply in something real, grounded, and timeless. I picked it up expecting a personal story of grief and healing, and what I got was that, and so much more.

Dede Montgomery’s writing is intimate without being sentimental, and her reflections on the death of her father are interwoven with stories that span seven generations of her family’s life in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. What struck me most was how effortlessly she moved between the personal and the historical. The way she recounts afternoons by the riverbank, berry-picking summers, and swimming in the Willamette, you can almost feel the sun on your skin and the river water between your toes.

But My Music Man is more than nostalgic imagery. It’s a beautifully textured look at what it means to belong, to a place, to a family, to a story larger than yourself. Through tales of ancestors like Chloe Clark and William Willson and stories of her father’s quiet wisdom and deep connection to the land, Montgomery shows how grief can coexist with reverence, humor, and even joy.

What I appreciated most was how the book didn’t try to tie everything up with a bow. There’s an honesty in the way she talks about change, forgiveness, and the complexity of family relationships. I found myself thinking about my own family, the stories I know, and those I never thought to ask about.

This is a slow, thoughtful read, one to be savored. If you're drawn to memoirs that are deeply place-based, reflective, and quietly powerful, My Music Man will stay with you long after the final page.

[Birgitta Hjalmarson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Music Man is a story about coming of age, in which Montgomery reckons with history, with her family, and with herself. It’s also a love song to Oregon’s Willamette River, the smells and the sounds, even the carp and the river rats, the stuff of nightmares when she was a child.

The book moves easily back and forth in time, introducing us to a great cast of characters. Chloe Clark, Montgomery’s great-great-great-grandmother, arrives from Connecticut in 1939, having sailed around the horn on the ship Lausanne, and is dead set on christening the American Indians. Pop-Ard, a great grandfather, likes to share stories and whiskey both, and spends two years in the McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary for selling false mortgages. Dorothy, Montgomery’s grandmother, becomes the Rose Festival Princess, drives a red jeep and finds “a way through life by controlling others” – her husband calls her “a most remarkable woman” and I can see why. And of course, there’s the Music Man himself, Montgomery’s father, with whom she has a close but fraught relationship, shown through recollections of his bouts of alcoholism, car tires against the gravel at night, loud voices, the slam of a door.

My Music Man is a story in the tradition of Carrie Young’s Nothing to Do but Stay, one of my all-time favorite books, a love song not to a river but to the prairie. We grow up much too fast. Before we know it, seemingly small decisions add up, shape our lives and become part of our past. All that’s left are the stories, and what wonderful stories they are!

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dede has a very unique writing style. It was hard for me to get started as I did not know her family, except for the historical Chloe, which she had shared with me. Because of the Chloe connection, reading the rest of her book was a must. Later, reading her blog, her role within a family of boys starts to make more sense to me. Often when writing a memoir, the author is so familiar with the setting and the characters, the story flows from all the background knowledge. As a reader, not privy to the various settings in time, and family and extended family, it was at first confusing. I had several starts and almost gave up. She writes in almost a stream of consciousness style and goes back and forth in time. Once I settled into her style, I enjoyed the book. I love the local setting of Oregon, the Willamette River, historical Salem, and some of the other familiar places. She is very frank about dealing with a father who drinks and how her mother and family cope.

Dede is so typical of young writers who once engaged, the stories start flowing from her. Continue the brilliant work, Dede.