To Everything on Earth: New Writing on Fate, Community, and Nature
Starred Review. In this superior essay collection, each of 13 nature writers (linked by Bill McKibben, who provides a foreword) deliver an exquisite, powerful piece on life and how it's lived. Besides nature, these writers are united in the strength and economy of their prose: "One day a strong goose came into my life," Lisa Courturier begins, in a story of her wildlife rehabilitation center; Susan Cerulean calls a swallow-tailed kite, "living origami." McKibben, citing Barry Lopez, asserts that "the real topic of nature writing is human community"; in her contribution, Diane Hueter Warner compares ferocity in nature and in humanity, "a tornado in the black of night" against a vicious home invader. Mortality is another recurring theme; Jordan Fisher Smith's entry features a dying man: "each lungful of oxygen, each moment, and then each next moment-these are all life is made of when nothing else can be counted on. And for this reason there is a strange peace at the center of catastrophe." Featuring an array of polished voices and exquisite imagery, this collection is not to be missed by fan of nature writing or literary nonfiction.