Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rillke

I was just a year out of university when I was in a downtown Philadelphia book store and picked up a slender volume entitled Letters to a Young Poet. I read it over and over and the advice I found there helped me in my struggle through young adulthood. Forty years have passed, and I was curious to read this new translation and commentary of the Letters from the perspective of maturity.

Anita Barrows is a translator and poet, a professor of psychology and a clinical psychologist. Joanna Macy is a professor of philosophy and scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking, and deep ecology. Their commentary offers interesting psychological and social insights into the letters.

Rilke was himself a young poet of twenty-seven when cadet Franz Xaver Kappus wrote and asked him to read his poetry and for advice. Kappus had learned that Rilke had attended the his military academy and hoped for advice as he endeavored to be a poet while in the military.

Rilke had been sent to the academy because his father wanted to remove him from his mother's influence. She had given him a girl's name, Rene Maria, and put him in dresses. His father decided that he needed toughening up to prepare for a man's life.

Rilke responded to Kappus by warning that no one, nothing external, could advise him; he must look within for the answers, and in the process, he must embrace the unknown and that which is terrifying.

If his work and peers provided little inspiration, he told Kappus, "If your daily life seems to bleak--don't blame it--blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its wealth." And if all else fails, there was his childhood, "that deep well of memories."

Letter Four includes one of my favorite lines, "have patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language." He continues to advise not to seek the answers, but to live into them. 

Rilke had been influenced by the sculptor Rodin who had taught the importance of solitude for the artist. Art required looking within and being separate. An artist does not need others:"Where there is no community among people, draw close to the things that present themselves around you; they will not abandon you. The nights are there, and the winds that blow through trees and over the lands..." 

Yes, solitude is difficult, but so is love. And love, he says, is not about "merging," the goal is a "more human love" that consists of "two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other," a love that allows personal space and growth.

Fear of the mysterious and the unknown is also good, something we should be open to and embrace. "If our world has fears, they are our fears. If it has an abyss, it belongs to us. If dangers appear, we must try to love them...Perhaps every terror is, at its core, something helpless that wants our help." 

And he advises to "let life happen to you. Believe me--you can count on life in any case." 

Trust the process, embrace that which frightens you, learn to love the unknown, and do not look for romantic love to save you. 

Rilke's advice helped me as a young woman, and it helps me as I approach my seventh decade. For the questions have only become larger, the unknown closer.

The commentators point out that the first letter from Kappus arrived as Rilke was writing The Book of Hours, in which he "reconcieveing of God as not the image of perfection but as the sacred process of seeing the brokenness of the world as a sacred act."

They see Rilke's Letter 7, to love without merging, representing Rilke's relationship with his great love Lou Andreas-Salome, and demonstrating the Jungian concept of individuation (self-realization that rises above self-centeredness). Lou studied with Freud and became the first female psychoanalyst. 

Also, in Letter 8 ("the world has fears") they find Rilke's message foreshadowing Jung's concept of the collective unconscious (shared archetypes/symbols, not personal) which Jung wrote about twelve years later.  

Barrows and Macy have eliminating sections of the letters as pontificating, or not relevant to modern readers, or because the message was badly conceived. Those segments appear in the commentary.

The translation is clear and easy to understand. 

Every generation faces a world of terrors, every person struggles to forge a path to a whole and healthy life. I believe that the Letters are still relevant and have much to offer. 

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Pub Date June 1, 2021  

ISBN: 9781611806861

hard cover $14.95 (USD)

from the publisher

A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy’s translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today’s world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity

.

Zero Waste Gardening by Ben Raskin

Forty-eight years ago my husband and I took a class in organic gardening and rented a plot in the seminary garden. We grew tomatoes and zucchinis and green beans and leaf lettuce and radishes and more, watering the garden from a creek nearby and mulching it with newspaper. I canned quarts of tomatoes and green beans for the winter.

clearing out the garden plot in spring 1973

Now we are in retirement and gardening again. Only one parsonage in the intervening years provided us with a garden plot; for a few years we had the best broccoli I ever ate! 

We have a small suburban yard. There is an herb garden and two raised planters for spinach, chard, and leaf lettuce. We have huge tubs for tomatoes. 

basil in my herb garden

But I want to expand my garden and I wanted new ideas. I hoped that Zero Waste Gardening would give them to me.

'Zero waste' is about sustainability, the awareness that resources are finite. Making use of everything we grow, and using the whole plant, is the focus of this book.

The presentation is very attractive with full pages with color illustrations. The contents are divided into Space (including preparation of the ground, manure, inter-planting, under-sowing, space, yield); Taste (recipes, using all the plant, food preservation, storage); and Waste (sowing and harvesting, reducing energy, water); and information on the garden plants.

The garden plants include the stock choices but also more unusual crops. Information on plants include when to sow, plant, and harvest; yield per plant; how to pick; growing tips; zero waste tips; and how to use.

There is a page on gardening tools needed and how to keep them sharp. And a full index and glossary.

I learned to use the leaves of root vegetables as food and that some seeds are also edible. I did not know that we can eat the roots of Swiss Chard. But we do eat the stems, which we cook and serve in a white sauce on toast with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

I especially liked the idea of not disturbing the soil but adding mulch to disintegrate over winter, providing soil for planting.

There are numerous ways we can participate in zero waste. For several years we have shopped with a delivery service that distributes 'imperfect' vegetables and fruits. They are too big or too small or have blemishes or are in oversupply or being phased out. 

Microgreens are all the rage now. The raised planter beds need to be thinned out, and I plan on keeping the baby plants for eating. 

We save zinnia seeds. I dry herbs. We freeze leftover veggies for soups, and dice up and freeze vegetables on the verge of going bad.

I always thought of these habits as being economically and environmentally friendly. Now I know, they are zero waste habits!

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Zero Waste Gardening: Maximize space and taste with minimal waste

by Ben Raskin

Quarto Publishing Group – White Lion

Pub Date June 1, 2021   

ISBN: 9780711262331

PRICE $18.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Zero-Waste Gardening is your essential go-to guide to growing your own food for maximum taste and minimum waste.  

Organic gardening expert, Ben Raskin, shares over 60 unique planning-for-yield guides for key crops. Work out how to make the most of the green space you have got, what to grow easily in it, and how much you will harvest seasonally for zero waste.

Learn about the roots of organic gardening, and unearth how to plant waste-free for any size plot, from balcony containers to 5-metre-square yards. Peppered with root-to-stalk cooking techniques, and edibility tips including which crops you can eat straight away, this is a plot-to-plate handbook for everyone with a green-thumb.

Perfect for new and experienced growers, zero-food waste followers, city gardeners, and the ecologically minded, this is the only gardening book you will ever need!

Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color by Laura Wasilowski

Playful Free-Form Embroidery will inspire fiber artists to create their own pictorial stories. Laura Wasilowski's quilts are joyful, fun, and colorful. You can learn her techniques with the six patterns she includes in her book--and then get playing and make your own Stitched Story!

Paint the world with color! Wasilowski uses wool and wool felt for her applique and perle cotton for the embroidery embellishments. She has a gift for combining stitches and colors to create detailed, visually interesting quilts with lots of texture.

Below, ladybugs have a stairway to their nut house. 

This cheery bird on a pin cushion is adorable.

A black background always makes colors pop. It also shows up the details in the foliage. 

This sweet lamb greeting a bird would be lovely in a nursery!

What story do you want to tell? 

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Playful Free-Form Embroidery: Stitch Stories with Texture, Pattern & Color
Laura Wasilowski
ISBN: 9781617459931
UPC: 734817-114086
eISBN: 9781617459948 Book ( $19.95 )
 eBook ( $15.99 

from the publisher

From the best-selling author of Joyful Stitching, Laura Wasilowski brings 6 new hand-embroidery projects with full-sized patterns and step-by-step pictorial directions. Bright and lively project designs include a whirling paint brush, a dancing bird, tea cups tipping, flowers blooming, a fuzzy sheep, and a happy acorn nut house. With the free-form embroidery approach, you can either follow the given directions, or allow your imagination to run wild and improv your own additions—there is no right or wrong! Plus, no special tools are needed—just felt or felted wool, perle cotton #12 and #8 threads, embroidery needles, and sewing equipment. Start your stitch story!

• Stitch 6 textured projects with easy-to-follow free-form embroidery instructions
• Each project features a unique stitch combination, including some wool applique
• Finished creations are visually stunning art work that can be treasured for a lifetime

about the author

Laura Wasilowski loves fabric. Her first love was a sweet pink gingham fabric selected for a 4-H sewing project. As a college student, she discovered more exotic fabrics. And while she earned a degree in costume design, she found a new thrill - dyeing.

For many years Laura created hand-dyed fabrics for garments that she sold in boutiques across the country. It was a friendly neighbor who introduced Laura to her current flame, the art quilt. This latest love is a marriage of fabric, color, and whimsy that she truly enjoys.

Laura is married to her colorful husband, Steve. They are the proud parents of Gus and Louise. Laura lives in Elgin, IL, where she hand dyes fabric and thread for her business, Artfabrik.

Visit Artfabrik online: artfabrik.com

Moving to Wordpress!

I am finally making the switch from Blogger to Wordpress!

My blog will be The Literate Quilter still, but at

 theliteratequilter.wordpress.com

I started blogging in 2008. Over the years, Blogger has changed, not always for the better. And with the loss of Goggle+ and soon feedburner, it is time to switch.

For the next weeks I will post on both blogs. Please visit my new site and sign up to follow there!

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Lux Aeterna. 

In the 1980s, I sang in masterworks choirs. We performed requiems, including those by Verdi and Mozart. "May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them." The lux aeterna was always emotional, the grieving's hope that the afterlife will compensate for the suffering of life.

This past year, millions have mourned victims of the pandemic. We have lost the very old and we have lost those whose life was yet to be lived.  As someone who is nearing my seventh decade, I felt my vulnerability. I considered last things and the value of the life I have lived and the possibilities for the days that may be granted to me. At this time, reading Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford had special meaning and especially affected me. 

In 1944, a rocket hit a Woolworth's and killed 168 people, including 15 children. This real event inspired Light Perpetual.

 

Spufford begins his novel with an amazing description of a bomb exploding. 

And then, Spufford imagines the lives of  five, fictional, children who died in the explosion, jumping 15 years at a time through their lives. 

They are ordinary people living ordinary lives, with the ordinary sorrows and joys of being human. They are flawed people. Some try to do their best, while the actions of others are harmful and destructive. Their lives are just one thing after another, problem after problem.

Like ordinary people, their lives can be boring. Like ordinary people, they have fears and unfulfilled dreams. And, like ordinary people, they are here, and in the blink of an eye, they are gone. Into the light. Become dust.

It all seems accidental, how life works out. And not the way we had planned, or hoped. And then, we run out of options. We have lived our lives.

And yet. And yet. As one character faces death, he has peace and he is able to praise God for all the mundane beauty of this world. It inspired me to tears.

What a miracle life is--how we waste it! Let us praise those moments when the sunlight breaks through the clouds and warms our face and the birds are singing and someone holds our hand. Let us remember those who are gone and pray they find light perpetual.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I previously read the author's novel On Golden Hill, which I  reviewed here, and I loved his nonfiction book I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination.

Light Perpetual
by Francis Spufford
Scribner
Pub Date May 18, 2021   
ISBN: 9781982174149
hardcover $27.00 (USD) 

from the publisher

From the critically acclaimed and award‑winning author of Golden Hill, a mesmerizing and boldly inventive novel tracing the infinite possibilities of five lives in the bustling neighborhoods of 20th-century London.

Lunchtime on a Saturday, 1944: the Woolworth's on Bexford High Street in southeast London receives a delivery of aluminum saucepans. A crowd gathers to see the first new metal in ages—after all, everything’s been melted down for the war effort. An instant later, the crowd is gone; incinerated. Among the shoppers were five young children.

Who were they? What futures did they lose? This brilliantly constructed novel lets an alternative reel of time run, imagining the life arcs of these five souls as they live through the extraordinary, unimaginable changes of the bustling immensity of twentieth-century London. Their intimate everyday dramas, as sons and daughters, spouses, parents, grandparents; as the separated, the remarried, the bereaved. Through decades of social, sexual, and technological transformation, as bus conductors and landlords, as swindlers and teachers, patients and inmates. Days of personal triumphs, disasters; of second chances and redemption.

Ingenious and profound, full of warmth and beauty, Light Perpetual illuminates the shapes of experience, the extraordinariness of the ordinary, the mysteries of memory and expectation, and the preciousness of life.

COVID-19 Life: Books & Quilts & More

I have now made four Cherish quilt blocks! Everyone says this strawberry themed block is their favorite so far. 

My husband ordered a signed copy of Stacy Abram's new novel While Justice Sleeps!

New on my NetGalley shelf is

• Still Life by Sarah Winman whose Tin Man I reviewed

Dad planted a spirea in the yard many years ago. This spring it is going to be magnificent!

The farm market has returned to our local park. This week I brought home rhubarb and made strawberry rhubarb short cake!

The fur grandkids are sun lovers. Lately, they have been gathering in the morning to enjoy the sunny spot in the living room. I love seeing these photos of them all together.

Ellie, Gus, and Sunny get along quite well, especially Gus and Sunny who are best buds.

Seen on my walks this week is a fairy garden with a flying pig...

and a naturalized front yard with gigantic Solomon's Seal.

Stay safe. Find your bliss.

The Story of Nelson Mandela: A Biography Book for New Readers by Floyd Stokes, LHD

The Story of Nelson Mandela is a new addition to the Biography Book for New Readers series from Rockridge Press. 

 

I loved to read biographies when I was a child. I was inspired by the lives of people who contributed to society and the world. I dreamed of growing up to be someone like them. I wish there had been a series like the Biography for New Readers when I was a girl!

The books are written for children aged 6 to 9, grades 1 and 2.

Nelson Mandela's life will inspire young readers. Author Floyd Stokes gives us a hero who is human and imperfect yet dedicated his life to gaining justice for his people, even sacrificing his freedom.

He was born in a mud hut in a small village. He was happy in his life and enjoyed the freedom of the great outdoors. His father was chief in a royal family, but he lost everything when he challenged British law. His father sent him to a Christian school for an education where he was given the name Nelson.

Nelson was sent to live with his wealthy uncle who wanted him to get an education and become a royal advisor.

At university, Nelson became politically active, standing up for student concerns. Expelled from school, Nelson moved to the city and saw first hand how his people were treated. He earned a law degree and in 1942 joined the African National Congress and became an activist for the rights of his people under colonial rule. 

Nelson's fight against Apartheid lead to his imprisonment. When he was finally released, he became South Africa's first African president.

Teaching helps throughout the book include timelines, challenge questions, and pronunciation guides. Questions are poised to help children relate to the story and to judge comprehension.

The series theme is Stories About Dreamers Just Like You, and the books are meant to inspire young people. 

I received a free book through Amazon Vine. My review is fair and unbiased.

See other books in the series by clicking on these links

Harriet Tubman
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-story-of-harriet-tubman-biography.html

Frida Kahlo
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-story-of-frida-kahlo-by-susan-b-katz.html

Jane Goodall
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-story-of-jane-goodall-by-susan-bkatz.html

Time and Again by Jack Finney/ The Dutch House by Anne Patchett Audiobook

Leif Enger (Virgil Wander) and David Abrams (Brave Deeds) were talking on Instagram about the 1970 novel Time and Again by Jack Finney. I knew I had it on Kindle (along with hundreds of other ebooks still unread) and so took a look at it.

And I kept on reading. 

I missed this when it came out because I was graduating from high school and going to college at the time of its publication. And for years, my reading was mostly 'looking backwards' to the 19th c.--The century in which this novel is set!

Si Morely is a vet and bored commercial artist when he is recruited into a top secret government experiment--traveling back in time. He is an excellent student and becomes the best at time travel. 

He sets out to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's grandfather's death and strange headstone, with a half burnt letter her only clue. 

The story becomes a mystery, and a romance, and a study of what civilization has given us and what it has taken away. 

Finney excels at description. Every costume, every horse drawn vehicle, every building, and every activity is recreated in such detail, it's like seeing a movie play in one's head. The streets filled with their cacophony of noise and smells, congested with pedestrians and horse-drawn carriages. The city at play in the snow. A devastating fire and daring rescues. An escape from police. 

And, the book is filled with Si's drawings and photographs, illustrating what he has seen.

Enger said if he had a book club, this would be his first choice.

My husband and I so enjoyed listening to News of the World together that I borrowed the audiobook of The Dutch House by Ann Patchett from the library. I had heard so much praise about Tom Hanks' narration--and it was justified.

We absolutely loved Hanks interpretation of the text. He brought the story alive. When I read the novel I did not catch the humor as strongly as Hanks delivers it. I will listen to anything read by Hanks.

The characters love or hate the Dutch House. Ownership is coveted by a second wife who steals it from her step-kids and then kicks them out. They can never quite get over its loss; they spend hours remembering their childhood there. Their inability to move on curtails their growth and harms their relationships.

I recalled my own lost childhood home. I fantasized about growing up and buying it back. When it was torn down while I was still a teenager, I was broken-hearted. 

This is a story of family and brokenness and loving the wrong things and regret and forgiveness. In the end, our family becomes the people who we choose and who choose us to be family.

Read my review of the novel here.

Seasons of Life Quilt by Sandra L. Mollon

 

I love applique quilts and have made several applique sampler quilts. I am always eager to learn new techniques. 

When I saw Sandra L. Mollon's Seasons of Life Quilt: Techniques and Patterns for 13 Baltimore Album Quilt Blocks it was so beautiful I wanted to learn more. I loved the seasonal blocks, the variety of patterns, the doves and vases of flowers, and how she added adorable small animals- bunny, squirrel, and hedgehog--into the blocks.

Mollon learned Album style applique, as I did, from Elly Sienkiewicz's Baltimore Beauties and Beyond books. Mollon spent two years "diligently working away on" learning hand applique and hand quilting skills. She then earned a Viewer's Choice ribbon.

Seasons of Life by Sandra Mollon

Her Seasons of Life quilt is in the permanent collection at the National Quilt Museum.

Now, Sandra offers all she has learned over her years of quiltmaking and teaching in this wonderful book. 

She explains how to use successfully use silk fabrics in applique and the tools that will aid you. Learn how to make prepared-edge applique and glue for placing the pieces.

You will find detailed instructions with photographs showing how to make pieced leaves, folded rosebuds, rickrack flowers, ruched roses, yo yo flowers, and beaded berries. I love her idea for fringed flower centers and can't wait to try it. 

Learn how to embellish your applique with embroidery stitches and how to use ink and colored pencils for added dimension.

Student quilts illustrate ways to make your Seasons of Life sampler your own. Some kept Mollon's medallion layout while others used twelve blocks for a smaller quilt.

Flora and Fauna by Lora Zamk

Remembering Mary by Judy Green

Flora, Fauna, Butterflies, and Bugs by Beth Butura

Seasons of Life by Tina McConnell

Each block pattern is presented with a photograph of her original block and a detail of the applique. She describes the fabrics she used and her method of assembly and embellishment. 

These small photos don't do the quilt justice! Visit the publisher website where you can click on the photos to enlarge them at 

https://www.ctpub.com/seasons-of-life-quilt/

Mollon's masters degree in Biology from Central Michigan University shows in her eye for detail and precision in recreating in the flora and fauna in the quilt.

These patterns are challenging. But if you follow the instructions, you will create a drop-dead gorgeous quilt! Individual blocks could also be made for pillow tops. Or, make wall hangings with the three blocks from one season, or a four block quilt using one block from each season.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Discover more of Mollon's quilts at her gallery on her website:

https://www.sandramollonquilts.com/quilt-galleries

Seasons of Life Quilt: Techniques & Patterns for 13 Baltimore Album Quilt Blocks

Sandra Mollon Book ( $29.95 )

 eBook ( $23.99 )

112 pages + one 16-page pullout

ISBN: 9781617459610

UPC:  734817-113966

eISBN: 9781617459627

from the publisher

Take on your next quilting feat with a champion quilt! From expert quilter Sandra Mollon, recreate the “Seasons of Life” quilt, which is now a part of a permanent collection of the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky. Learn techniques for incorporating unusual fabrics, creating dimensional flowers, as well as shading with inks and embellishing blocks. In true “Baltimore” style, each of the 13 blocks features a different tribute to nature in highly stylized fashion: baskets, wreaths, flowers, leaves and vines, and small garden or forest animals. Appliqué each block for your very own stunning creation.

Learn tons of techniques with appliqué, embroidery, ribbon work, beading, and more!

Includes full-sized pattern and instructions to the award-winning “Seasons of Life” quilt

Make 13 unique blocks with a pieced and scalloped border encircling the blocks

Meet Sandra

Sandra is an award winning quilter living in Northern California.  She has been quilting for over 30 years, and teaching for 18 years.  

Sandra began as a traditional quilter,  specializing in hand appliqué for a couple of decades.  You can see a few of my quilts in the book, “500 Traditional Quilts” by Lark Publications. She is currently working on a book to be released in 2021 with C & T Publication for her original designed quilt, “Seasons of Life.

She has had many quilts juried into large international and regional juried shows.  Her traditional quilt, “Season’s of Life”  won a major award in 2019 both at Road to California (Outstanding Large Quilt), and at the 2019 AQS Paducah show it won a purchase award and is in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY.  

Additionally her work in art quilting has wonderful many place awards, a “Best Pictorial” award and a 3rd place award in 2019 at PIQF, a 1st Place in Wall at MQX 2019,  Best of Show Award and 1st place at the RCQG show in Sacramento Ca, 2018, and a 3rd place at Road to California in 2020.  

She enjoys teaching as well as working on her art, and loves to travel and meet new people.

Highway Blue by Ailsa McFarlane

Highway Blue is a short novel of under 200 pages. Alisa McFarlane offers readers a moment in time in the life of her characters, two lost and lonely young adults whose lives intersect in a moment in time. 

Twenty-year-old Anne Marie is going through the motions of life, living with strangers, work at a bar and dog walking giving her just enough money to survive, still hurt by the disappearance of her husband after a year of marriage. Now he suddenly has returned, hoping Anne Marie can save him, but she has nothing to give him.

But when a man attacks them and ends up dead, Cal convinces Anne Marie to run and over the next days she remembers her past and contemplates Cal's place in her future.

They are helped by strangers along the way, a happy couple and a lonely trucker. Cal tells Anne Marie that he had hoped their marriage would give him a place to belong in this world. She had loved him. He loved the idea of them.

Heavy on dialogue and Anne Marie's inner thoughts, the story is about romantic ideals and disillusion, the limits of love, and the strength to recreate oneself.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Highway Blue: A Novel
by Ailsa McFarlane
Random House Publishing Group - Hogarth
Pub Date May 18, 2021 
ISBN: 9780593229118
Hardcover $25.00 (USD)

A hypnotic debut of broken love on the run, from a blazingly original young writer

“A road novel, a love story, a coming-of-age tale, but with sentences so sharply wrought, characters so achingly precise, that it feels new and fresh and utterly alive.”—Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want

“In front of me the long length of the road wound out, wound out and wound on under hot sky. And I drove . . .”

In the lonely town of San Padua, Anne Marie can never get the sound of the ocean out of her head. And it’s here—dog-walking by day, working bars by night—where she tries to forget about her ex-husband, Cal: both their brief marriage and their long estrangement.

When Cal shows up on Anne Marie’s doorstep one day, clearly in trouble, she reluctantly agrees to a drink. But later that night a gun goes off in a violent accident and the young couple are forced to hit the open road together in escape.

Crammed in a beat-up car with their broken past, so begins a journey across a vast, mythical American landscape, through the dark seams of the country, toward a city that may or may not represent salvation. 

Highway Blue is a story of being lost and found—and of love, in all its forms. Written in spare, shimmering prose, it introduces the arrival of an electrifyingly singular new voice.

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

During this pandemic I have seen friends on social media share rejuvenating experiences in nature through daily walks or hikes into the wilds, views from windows from homes in cities and woods and moors, experiences with fox frolicking in suburban yards or wild birds landing on outstretched palms offering seed and suet.

In the deep green woods, photo by my brother

My brother walks every weekend with his girlfriend, through every weather. They seek out the lonely places, the empty dirt roads, the parks only populated in sunshine. 

A lonely view by my brother

I have the local city park filled with towering oak trees and black squirrels hopping across the grass, a hawk watching overhead, or the protected woods were trillium carpet the forest floor in spring.

Trillium in suburban Tenhave Woods

Even my own patio, sitting under the apple trees, offers a daily respite, watching the robins joyously splash in the bird bath, the sparrows flitting in and out of their nesting box, while bee and butterfly visit the herb garden and zinnia, perhaps oblivious to the rabbit who sneaks in to steal leaves from the rose bush.

in my own back yard

How does anyone get through a week without communing with nature? A glimpse of flowering tree or autumnal glow of color across the grass? The raucous call of the Blue Jay or the hoot of an owl in the night?

Oak tree in the city woods

Lyanda Lynn Haupt writes that being rooted in nature is a spiritual practice. She shares her personal stories of walking barefoot and alone in the forest, camping and walking blind at night, healed, and sometimes afraid, by the experience. 

The spirituality of oneness with all the earth is ancient, the connectedness of all life part of religious experience found in many faiths, including Christianity. But modern humans live in houses and work in rooms and Western society buys and uses and discards; we have lost wonder and respect and stewardship for Earth.

Haupt's witness shows us how to regain the sacred, how to claim sisterhood with all living things, how to embrace the darkness, and how to heal the earth and ourselves.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I previously read the author's book Mozart's Starling, which I reviewed here.

Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit
by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Little, Brown Spark
Pub Date May 4,  2021 
ISBN: 9780316426480
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Deepen your connection to the natural world with this inspiring meditation, "a path to the place where science and spirit meet" (Robin Wall Kimmerer).

In Rooted, cutting-edge science supports a truth that poets, artists, mystics, and earth-based cultures across the world have proclaimed over millennia: life on this planet is radically interconnected. Our bodies, thoughts, minds, and spirits are affected by the whole of nature, and they affect this whole in return. In this time of crisis, how can we best live upon our imperiled, beloved earth?

Award-winning writer Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s highly personal new book is a brilliant invitation to live with the earth in both simple and profound ways—from walking barefoot in the woods and reimagining our relationship with animals and trees, to examining the very language we use to describe and think about nature. She invokes rootedness as a way of being in concert with the wilderness—and wildness—that sustains humans and all of life.

In the tradition of Rachel Carson, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Mary Oliver, Haupt writes with urgency and grace, reminding us that at the crossroads of science, nature, and spirit we find true hope. Each chapter provides tools for bringing our unique gifts to the fore and transforming our sense of belonging within the magic and wonder of the natural world.