For his personal nonfiction, Scott Russell Sanders has won the Lannan Literary Award and the Great Lakes Book Award. He teaches literature at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he lives. After an angry confrontation with his son on a hiking trip intended to restore their relationship, Scott Sanders realizes that his own despair about the ills of our age has darkened his son's world. Scott Sanders, judging little and settling forth much, gives us texture and depth in southern Indiana, a place that's dressed a phenomenal number of the nation's enduring buildings. Rich in emotion, memory, and concern for the world we inhabit . . . harrowing and convincing.
Sanders looks for and often finds universal truths in the particulars of everyday life. . . .
A marvelous celebration of the small and large mysteries of life. In the tradition of Wendell Berry, Sanders champions fidelity to place, informed by ecological awareness, arguing that intimacy with one's home region is the grounding for global knowledge. Reflective, rhapsodic, luminous essays. A wise and beautifully written book. If a human being were to write perfectly he or she would write like Thoreau. . . .