Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams
You might take a deep breath when you begin this book, then not realize that you haven't exhaled until you finish the last page.
With heartbreaking clarity and compassion, Terry (a personal friend) describes the cancer her mother suffered perhaps as a result of the fallout from atomic bomb tests conducted in the southwest in the 1950s. Was there some cosmic connection between her mother's failing days and the rising levels of the Great Salt Lake ? Notes the author,
“At thirty-four, I became the matriarch of my family. The losses I encountered at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge as Great Sale Lake was rising helped me to face the losses within my family. When most people had given up on the Refuge, saying the birds were gone, I was drawn further into its essence. In the same way that when someone is dying many retreat, I chose to stay.”
Regardless of your own attachment to your mother or to a particular landscape, Refuge will make you reconsider both.
