This Tender Place: The Story of a Wetland Year

    After the deaths of her father and father-in-law, Laurie Lawlor discovers an unlikely place for healing and transformation in a wetland in southeastern Wisconsin—a landscape of abundant and sometimes inaccessible beauty that has often been ignored, misunderstood, and threatened by human destruction. In her decade-long personal wetland journey, she examines the sky, delves underwater, and peers between sedges in all seasons and all times of day.
    This Tender Place is a celebration of nature, the elements, and humanity. From the wetland’s genesis during the ice age to its survival in the twenty-first century, Lawlor chronicles the universal ties among people, wild places, and healthy wetlands.

    An engaging and deeply intimate record, This Tender Place is at its heart a story of refuge and renewal refracted through the lens of life within the wetlands—one of the most productive, yet most endangered, ecosystems in the world.

Laurie Lawlor is the author of thirty-three books for children and adults, among them Addie Across the Prairie and Window on the West: The Frontier Photography of William Henry Jackson. Her books have received several accolades including the Carl Sandburg Award for Children’s Literature, the Golden Kite Honor Book for Nonfiction award, and the American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults award. She teaches writing at Columbia College in Chicago.