Oh, the toxic political vitriol, the alternative facts, the intimidating personalities, the character assassinations.

Nope, we aren’t talking about wheeler-dealers in Washington, D.C. Not even in Juneau. Our locus is the small community of Haines, with a borough population of about 2,500. This former logging town now survives on tourism, fishing and the outdoors, and it is the storytelling palette for Alaska writer and 36-year town resident, Heather Lende.

Her fourth and latest book, “Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics,” by Algonquin Books, is unlike any of her other books, essays and columns produced over a 20-year writing career. Those books were about friendship and family, goodness and big hearts. This book is about social media knife fights and a nasty borough recall election, with Lende and two other assembly members in its crosshairs.

It’s also a book about how to survive all that.

Even Lende will admit she probably was naïve to run for a three-year borough assembly term. What could go wrong, right? After all, with her kids grown, her husband busy in the lumber business, and a long winter of dark nights, how bad could a few evening meetings be? “I have time,” she said, “and goodwill.” It also looked to her like Hillary Clinton might become the first woman president; Lende wanted to be a part of the political moment.

She also assumed that people knew her and her values. If they voted her into office – a local “liberal” who worked for schools, arts, hospice compassion and a resourceful library, and favored mining constraints to help protect the Chilkat River – she must embody perspectives they wanted represented in local government.

But, once on the assembly, she had a nuanced perspective on a controversial harbor expansion. And after the assembly voted to fire the borough manager, she didn’t leap to support the borough assistant manager for the promotion. A recall effort hatched, stoked by incendiary commentary in a closed Facebook group.

Readers of the Chilkat Valley News (where, as its obituary writer, Lende has memorialized about 500 locals) know that she survived the recall. But only Lende remembers the deep discomfort of viewing petition signatures on the borough website, scrolling past the known detractors, then deeper on the list to the names of friends.

“It was the people who built our house,” Lende said, “workers at the grocery store, my husband’s hunting partner, Ed. I’d promised to take his dog when he died.” Those signatures hurt.

But the meat of the book is best embodied in this story. Lende had her legs under her as a borough assembly person when another knotty problem surfaced. The town “capitalist” had a plan to remove rocks from a nearby local neighborhood for a development project. It would require heavy trucks lumbering down a narrow road where families lived. It meant dust and danger.

The planning commission had approved the plan, but it had been appealed by unhappy neighborhood residents and so headed to the assembly for a final decision. One of those neighbors had approached Lende and asked for help with the issue. She promised to do what she could.

After a hearing that lasted “four days and some nights,” according to Lende, the assembly finally approved the plan, but with a compromise. They required the developer to mitigate impact on the neighborhood by only extracting rock at certain hours, for example, and only moving it through the neighborhood at certain times.

The assembly felt that they’d done a good thing by crafting this compromise. Not everyone was happy, or course – not the developer, not the neighborhood residents. But people were still talking to each other and the assembly felt it had “done what government should do. The Mayor was smiling, the clerk was smiling … it was a good moment,” Lende recalled.

And then the neighbor who opposed the plan and who’d asked Lende for help, weighed in. He turned to Lende and said, “You know, I am most disappointed in you. Your grandchildren live on that road. How are you going to feel when one of those trucks runs ’em over?”

Lende was stunned. This is what you say to somebody, after all this effort? Lende picked up her coat and bags and walked silently out of the hall to her car. The experience was so disappointing.

And then she wrote this in her book:

“The story of how we shape our common existence, the rules that guide us, and the representatives who create them and to some extent ensure we abide by them, has some dazzling chapters – and they often contain pleasant surprises – but there are a lot of heartbreaking plot twists along the way. Please don’t take this the wrong way. I believe that if we citizens, we voters – and we elected officials – acknowledge this truth, the healthier our democracy will be. I hate to sound like a grandmother, but I am one, and so my dears, learn to share, take turns, and understand not everyone can have everything she wants all the time. Finally, and this may be the most important thing I will ever say about politics and life: Accept apologies that won’t be offered and forgive people who may never ask you to.”

It was one of the last things she wrote for the book. By that time, she’d gotten over the setbacks. She’d moved on. When she thought about what had helped her survive the hardest times, it was that: letting things go.

“It’s like what E.B. White says,” Lende said. “‘Nothing is more time-consuming than an enemy.’ If it is not going to go anywhere, you have to drop it and try to go to the next thing. You don’t give up, you don’t give in. But you have to get over obsessing about it.”

Lende said she has no silver bullet for our national political obsessing and searing divisions. But she does see “windows into how we reconcile.” Redemption comes in the hot words not spoken, in the door not slammed against someone you disagree with. It comes in striving, always, to be polite and civil. After all, next week you may be standing side by side with your “enemy,” serving up a community potluck supper. It helps to leave room for disagreement.

So where is the magic toolkit for this? Lende leaned on many local mentors for guidance and fortitude, including the memory of Ray Menaker, a self-proclaimed socialist who’d served eight terms on the borough assembly. She wrote: “He never took criticism personally … he listened … he was curious to know and understand why people with differing viewpoints held them.” Lende wrote “Be like Ray,” at the top of her assembly agendas.

Another mentor gave her a book, and now she recommends it to anyone who asks. It’s a dog-eared, coffee-stained, underlined copy of P.M Forni’s 2002 book, “Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct.”

More and more, that sounds like a good idea.

Kathleen McCoy, of Anchorage, is an independent journalist with 30 years of reporting, writing and editing experience in Alaska. As host of “Hometown Alaska” on Alaska Public Media, she recently interviewed Lende about her new book.