Terry Tempest Williams
Paperback | Pages: 314 pages Rating: 4.16 | 8416 Users | 749 Reviews
Identify Books During Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
| Original Title: | Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place |
| ISBN: | 0679740244 (ISBN13: 9780679740247) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Literary Awards: | Evans Biography Award (1991) |
Rendition To Books Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.Describe Appertaining To Books Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
| Title | : | Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place |
| Author | : | Terry Tempest Williams |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | 10th Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 314 pages |
| Published | : | 2001 by Vintage (first published 1991) |
| Categories | : | Autobiography. Memoir. Nonfiction. Environment. Nature. Biography Memoir |
Rating Appertaining To Books Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
Ratings: 4.16 From 8416 Users | 749 ReviewsRate Appertaining To Books Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
This book is the sort of beautiful that makes your soul ache. I've seen reviews criticize the dialogue as not sounding at all natural enough, and while I think those criticisms are indeed fair, I'll admit I hardly noticed, so swept up was I in the maternal relationships of the book, and of an ever-changing bird refuge as a metaphor for a family's wholeness. This book is about so many stark and important and timeless truths, but for me, this book is about saying goodbye to people who make up thethis is no conventional book by a conventional author- it is written by a fierce nature lover and serious nature writer. though nature writing is not my favorite genre, tempest williams reached me in a way no author ever has. i've turned to this book like i would turn to a best friend over the past few years- it's always as good as i remember it.
I really WANT to love TTW's writing, but persisted with this book more out of loyalty than out of feeling compelled to keep reading. It's a predictable trope. I'm sad for the sadness of loss, of course. I know how it feels to want to record it. I enjoyed learning about the Great Salt Lake and the bird refuge there.... It just wasn't excellent overall, for me. Pleasant enough, but not a barn-burner.
Reading this book is like... watching the wetland landscape of your childhood home transform and disappear, and watching your mother and beloved grandmother succumb to cancer and die. Just like.This book was -- stunning. Like a cattle prod between the eyes. And painful. Like crying sand instead of tears. And so familiar (yes I lived in Utah, yes with all my ancestors' pioneer histories, yes with the pervasive blessing and burden of Mormonism, yes with the inspiring and healing landscapes of
I first read this book in 2000, and I knew it was "good," but it didn't draw me in. I've taught her epilogue, "Clan of the One-Breasted Women," several times, and I'm rereading *Refuge* because I assigned it. It is brilliant. Tempest Williams writes, about her mother's ovarian cancer--and that of her grandmothers and aunts--which Tempest Williams believes was caused by nuclear testing. But it's about more than that: it's about how the land and water are tied so closely to our bodies and the
Wow, wow, wow. I finished this book a moment ago, and I pressed it to my chest and closed my eyes and listened to my heart beat against it. This is a book about grief, love, birds, acceptance, and the willingness to live life, even when you know pain. "Pain prepares us for peace."
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer with a deep and active interest in environmental education and conservation, Refuge is both a memoir of a period in her life when she accompanied her mother through the illness that would claim her life, and shortly after her grandmother, leaving her the matriarch of the family at the age of thirty-four.Although this is the book she is most well-known for, I first read and reviewed her writing and encountered her mother in a more recent, and equally
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