Frederic Homer Balch was an American author from the Pacific Northwest, best known for The Bridge of the Gods: A Romance of Indian Oregon, the only work published during his brief life.
11 Facts About Frederic Balch
2.
Frederic Balch thus had two older siblings, a beloved half-sister, Allie Gallagher, who strongly encouraged his writing, and a half-brother, William Benson Helm, whose adventurous spirit he greatly admired.
3.
Frederic Balch received his only formal instruction at the Mount Tabor school, impressing his teachers by his extensive reading.
4.
About the time of his 21st birthday, Frederic Balch was suddenly converted from his previous agnosticism to Christianity and burned his only manuscript of Wallulah because it contained too many "heathen" elements.
5.
Frederic Balch first worked as a home missionary, serving local communities along the Columbia.
6.
Early in the narrative Frederic Balch creates a scene that illustrates the romance's worldview, in which physical matter, unseen spirit, and human minds are subtly intertwined.
7.
Frederic Balch utilizes the protagonist's consciousness to describe authoritatively native dress, diet, lodging, and social habits such as gambling and potlatches, in which a host gives a feast, offering rich gifts to every guest.
8.
Frederic Balch mistakenly depicted the natural bridge spanning the Columbia as a soaring stone arch.
9.
Frederic Balch planned to make The Bridge of the Gods a mythic prelude to more naturalistic novels he would write to illustrate crucial events in Northwest history, but only Genevive: A Tale of Oregon survives complete.
10.
In 1889 Frederic Balch took a leave of absence from the Hood River Congregational Church to attend the Pacific Theological Seminary in Oakland, California in Berkeley.
11.
Frederic Balch died at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, on June 3,1891.