A Northern Front: New and Selected Essays
While watching marine biologists at work on a research vessel off southeastern Alaska, Hildebrand asked the chief scientist to explain the point of his research. "We chase stories," the scientist answered simply. Hildebrand admired the reply, and offers this collection of essays as a literary equivalent. The pieces in the book, written over a 20-year period, present glimpses of landscapes and the people who populate them. The essays are extremely varied: in one, the author accompanies Hmong immigrants deer hunting in Wisconsin; in another, he tries to follow the course of the Big Two-Hearted River using Hemingway's classic story as a guide. (Hemingway took some liberties with the Michigan landscape.) "Touching Bottom" draws a melancholy yet lovely parallel between a wounded mallard and the author's dissolved marriage. At one point Hildebrand laments, "Perhaps we have lost the language to describe a landscape beyond the terminology of real estate brokers." Not true, if this collection is any example.Rebecca MakselCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved