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In This We Are Native : Memoirs and Journeys

Name: In This We Are Native : Memoirs and Journeys
Author: Annick Smith
ISBN: 9781585742462

by Annick Smith

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Overview

In This We Are Native couples a passionate argument for saving wilderness with a breathtaking memoir of love and loss and rebirth. Smith unflinchingly tells of her young husband's final year. After a desperate move to seedy Hollywood Boulevard, where they try in vain to break into the movies, they give up, returning to Montana's Blackfoot River Valley just in time. His death left her with four sons to raise alone. And now she eloquently mourns her beloved valley when it is brutally clear-cut by corporate logging.But it is Smith's gift that In This We Are Native is a glorious celebration of life, transcending grief in language exacting and unsentimental. "Here is a woman to admire and love," Annie Dillard wrote of the author. In a voice clear and true, Smith regales us with the joys of huckleberry gathering, the stealth of the mountain lion; rejuvenation in an icy mountain river; and the immense satisfaction of intimacy with wildlands. She rejoices in the preciousness of lovers and family, the gift of travel, and the deep contentment of growing old in a place you love.Part natural history, part personal revelation, In This We Are Native will place Smith firmly on the map of America's most esteemed women writers. (5 3/4 X 8 1/2, 316 pages)

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Editorials

Susan Saltor Reynolds

Smith's fury at Plum Creek, the company logging and developing and thoughtlessly destroying her piece of heaven--with the sounds of chain saws and the dust of trucks and the havoc wreaked on the forest habitat--is deeply written, swelling like a strong wind through the book.
— latimes.com

Library Journal

Seasoned author (Homestead), magazine writer (Audubon, Travel & Leisure), and film producer (A River Runs Through It), Smith here offers a loosely organized collection of reflections. It begins in her Montana home and ends in an old family haunt on Lake Michigan but not until she travels to such places as Hungary, Chile, and Alaska. Most of the pieces have appeared in other publications, and many are highly personal, discussing her family's struggle in Hollywood and the untimely deaths of her husband and, years later, of her father. Others are pure nature writing, with lyrical lines such as the opening sentence: "The meadow is a cupped hand that holds me." Smith is an equally skilled travel writer, and her description of trips to Lake Titicaca and a chalet in Glacier National Park evoke the dreamy afterglow of a place in one's memory. Her introspective style binds these disparate essays together to form a work that reveals her passion for life and the natural landscape. Recommended for general collections. Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ., Sault Ste. Marie, MI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

This memoir by essayist Smith (she's a contributor to and , among others) describes her life and surroundings in rural Montana. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)