Thin Places

Thin Places PDF Author: Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571317694
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
An Indie Next Selection for April 2022 An Indies Introduce Selection for Winter/Spring 2022 A Junior Library Guild Selection Both a celebration of the natural world and a memoir of one family’s experience during the Troubles, Thin Places is a gorgeous braid of “two strands, one wondrous and elemental, the other violent and unsettling, sustained by vividly descriptive prose” (The Guardian). Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in. Ní Dochartaigh asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours, but—at the same time—it never really was.

Thin Places

Thin Places PDF Author: Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571317694
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
An Indie Next Selection for April 2022 An Indies Introduce Selection for Winter/Spring 2022 A Junior Library Guild Selection Both a celebration of the natural world and a memoir of one family’s experience during the Troubles, Thin Places is a gorgeous braid of “two strands, one wondrous and elemental, the other violent and unsettling, sustained by vividly descriptive prose” (The Guardian). Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in. Ní Dochartaigh asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours, but—at the same time—it never really was.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood PDF Author: Janisse Ray
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571317953
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a “heartfelt and refreshing” (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. This new edition updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope. Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems her home and her people, while also cataloging the source of her childhood hope: the Edenic longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development. A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood.

Body of Water

Body of Water PDF Author: Chris Dombrowski
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319158
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
A poet’s memoir of taking an unplanned trip to the Bahamas and meeting a fishing guide who changed his life: “A splendid book.”—Jim Harrison in The New York Times Book Review Chris Dombrowski, a poet and passionate fly-fisher, had a second child on the way and an income hovering perilously close to zero when he received a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami. Thus began a journey that would eventually lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it. By the time Dombrowski meets him, though, Pinder has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder’s stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the bonefishing guide’s life. “A poet and Montana-based fly-fishing guide recounts his trip to the Bahamas, where he met an aging guide who taught him about fish and life…loosely links reflections on his experiences catching and releasing bonefish, the history and geography of the Bahamas, the construction of fishing rods, stories he has told his children, and the difference between fishing or hunting for sport and for dinner.”—Kirkus Reviews “Thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Late Migrations

Late Migrations PDF Author: Margaret Renkl
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319875
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

All the Wild Hungers

All the Wild Hungers PDF Author: Karen Babine
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319832
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 110

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Book Description
A “lovely” memoir of caring for a mother with cancer, reflecting on our appetites for food and for life (Minneapolis Star Tribune). When her mother is diagnosed with a rare cancer, Karen Babine—cook, collector of vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits to preparing her mother anything she will eat, a vegetarian diving into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast. In this series of mini-essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. As she notes that her sister’s unborn baby is the size of lemon while her mother’s tumor is the size of a cabbage, she reflects on what draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease. What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found—and can we create it from scratch? And how, Babine asks as she bakes cookies with her small niece and nephew, does a family create its own food culture across generations? Generous and bittersweet, All the Wild Hungers is an affecting chronicle of one family’s experience of illness and of a writer's culinary attempt to make sense of the inexplicable. “[Babine] continues to navigate her way through extraordinary challenges with ordinary comforts, finding poetry in the everyday. Reading this quiet book should provide the sort of balm for those in similar circumstances that writing it must have for the author.”―Kirkus Reviews “Profound…Anyone who has experienced a family member’s struggle with cancer will be stabbed by recognition throughout this book…In the end, the overriding hunger referred to in this lovely book’s title is the hunger for life.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune

The World Is on Fire

The World Is on Fire PDF Author: Joni Tevis
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571318984
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This “magnificently compelling” essay collection explores obsession, anxiety, and Existential dread from the Book of Revelation to the Liberace Museum (Minneapolis Star Tribune). The sermons of Joni Tevis’ youth filled her with dread, a sense “that an even worse story—one you hadn’t read yet—could likewise come true.” In this revelatory collection, she reckons with her childhood fears by exploring the uniquely American fascination with apocalypse. From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion, to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, her settings are often places of destruction and loss. And yet Tevis transforms these eerie destinations into sites of creation as well, uncovering powerful points of connection. Whether she’s relating her experience of motherhood or describing the timbre of Freddy Mercury’s voice in “Somebody to Love,” she relies on the same reverence for detail and sense of awe. And by anchoring her attention to the raw materials of our world—nails and beams, dirt and stone, bones and blood—she discovers grandeur in the seemingly mundane. Winner of the 2016 Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction Finalist for the 2016 Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize

Handle with Care

Handle with Care PDF Author: Jodi Picoult
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743296419
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
C.1 ST. AID. AMAZON. 03-11-2009. $27.95.

Things That Are

Things That Are PDF Author: Amy Leach
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 157131864X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Essays by a Whiting Award winner: “Like a descendant of Lewis Carroll and Emily Dickinson . . . one of the most exciting and original writers in America.” —Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go Things That Are takes jellyfish, fainting goats, and imperturbable caterpillars as just a few of its many inspirations. In a series of essays that progress from the tiniest earth dwellers to the most far-flung celestial bodies—considering the similarity of gods to donkeys, the inexorability of love and vines, the relations of exploding stars to exploding sea cucumbers—Amy Leach rekindles a vital communion with the wild world, dormant for far too long. Things That Are is not specifically of the animal, the human, or the phenomenal; it is a book of wonder, one the reader cannot help but leave with their perceptions both expanded and confounded in delightful ways. This debut collection comes from a writer whose accolades precede her: a Whiting Award, a Rona Jaffe Award, a Best American Essays selection, and a Pushcart Prize, all received before her first book-length publication. Things That Are marks the debut of an entirely new brand of nonfiction writer, in a mode like that of Ander Monson, John D’Agata, and Eula Biss, but a new sort of beast entirely its own. “Explores fantastical and curious subjects pertaining to natural phenomena . . . for those interested in looking at the natural world through the lens of a fairy tale, this is a bonbon of a book.” —Kirkus Reviews

The Home Place

The Home Place PDF Author: J. Drew Lanham
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571318755
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. “When you’re done with The Home Place, it won’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.”—Star Tribune “A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.”—National Geographic

Rising

Rising PDF Author: Elizabeth Rush
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
ISBN: 1571319700
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, this powerful elegy for our disappearing coast “captures nature with precise words that almost amount to poetry” (The New York Times). Hailed as “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. With every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through these dramatic changes, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish. Rush sheds light on the unfolding crises through firsthand testimonials—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—woven together with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities. A Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal Best Book Of 2018 Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award A Chicago Tribune Top Ten Book of 2018