These essays travel from jungle to desert to sea, from cities to ruins, exploring how history is shaped by ceremonies, expeditions, and wars. Along the way, they pose fundamental but nonetheless provocative questions: Where do we come from? Where are we going? And what shall we do?
In the bestselling novel Montana 1948, Larry Watson presented a prize-winning evocation of a time, a place, and a family. Now Watson returns to the vast Montana landscape with a stunning prequel that illuminates a family “universal in their flaws and virtues” (Washington Post).
Originally drawn to the priesthood by the mystery, purity, and sensual fabric of the Catholic Church, as well as by its promise of a safe harbor from his violent father, James Dressler finds himself—just a few years after his ordination—attracted again to his first love, Betty García. This is the story of a young man at a crossroads, caught between faith, family, and love.
Winner of the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature
Strange things begin to happen after eleven-year-old Sebby finds a secret cave behind his home: he falls ill, his family’s chickens disappear, and he finds a special pair of eyeglasses that show him a world where colors come alive and fly through the air. When Sebby sets out to solve these mysteries, he and his twin sister go to places they never could have imagined.
Drawing on a dizzying array of sources—including Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Korean folklore, and Turkish proverbs—this winner of the American Book Award explores the entangled myths that accompany the experience of immigration. These poems reveal a universal homesickness for the self, a persistent and incurable longing.
A fabulist’s compendium of poetry and prose, from one of our most fanciful and “disturbingly original” (Chicago Tribune) writers. These experimental pieces ask the reader not to imagine the world for what it is, but for what it could be: a blank tableau on which a spirited imagination can conjure tales out of, seemingly, nothing.
Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism
By
David Gessner
With a tragically leaky canoe, a broken cell phone, a cooler of beer, and a passionate environmental planner in tow, the author sets off on a rough-and-tumble journey down Boston’s Charles River. Along the way, the vision of a new sort of eco-champion begins to emerge: someone who falls in love with a forgotten space, and then fights like hell for it.
As a young man, Neil Fox made a healthy living on heads-I-win-tails-you-lose venture capital deals. Now, years later, that cunning has calcified into a principled isolation, which Neil hopes to preserve even as a new neighbor builds his home in the midst of Neil’s Long Island Arcadia.
Frigid, lethal, and wildly beautiful, Lake Superior is as alluring as it is dangerous. Featuring three women living on its shores in three different centuries, this novel—haunting, rich in historical detail, and universal in its exploration of the human desire for meaning—illuminates the mysterious powers of the greatest of the Great Lakes.
Reflections on Simon Dinnerstein and The Fulbright Triptych
By
Daniel Slager
The Fulbright Triptych is widely considered a masterpiece of contemporary art: a striking family tableau that has quietly inspired, exhorted, and challenged its viewers for years. This collection of essays directly reflects the painting’s inherent message of symphonic connectivity, demonstrating the rich potential for collaboration among the arts.
