by Philip Connors ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2011
Print journalist and fire lookout: When it comes to paying jobs, Connors has a death wish, but he has made the very best of...
Former Wall Street Journal editor Connors ruminates on his eighth summer in the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico.
A small, glass-walled perch on stilts on the middle of nowhere—a fit milieu for misfits, from the curmudgeon to the bliss-seeker, as Edward Abbey and Jack Kerouac so amply demonstrated—but Connors brings a fresh eye to the fire-lookout job. He combines explanations of his interest in the vocation with a professional’s thoughtful considerations on the role of fire in the greater environmental good. He is there (with his dog, an important character) for a multitude of well-considered reasons: to witness, undiluted, an eclipse, lightning, sandstorm and fire (watching “pine trees explode in a blue ball of smoke”). He is also there to master the act of solitude: “Once you struggle through that swamp of monotony where time bogs down in excruciating ticks from your wristwatch, it becomes possible to break through to a state of equilibrium, to reach a kind of waiting and watching that verges on what I can only call the holy.” For him, there is no better job on Earth. With balance and experienced insight, he provides sharp discussions of burn policy and our rich, evolving understanding of fire ecology. Meanwhile, if suspicious plumes aren’t calling, the author revels in nighthawks, ladybugs, long walks and the squid-ink dark of a moonless night.
Print journalist and fire lookout: When it comes to paying jobs, Connors has a death wish, but he has made the very best of it.Pub Date: April 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-185936-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
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by Brian Fies illustrated by Brian Fies ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 5, 2019
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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by Helen Macdonald ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2015
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a...
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An inspired, beautiful and absorbing account of a woman battling grief—with a goshawk.
Following the sudden death of her father, Macdonald (History and Philosophy/Cambridge Univ.; Falcon, 2006, etc.) tried staving off deep depression with a unique form of personal therapy: the purchase and training of an English goshawk, which she named Mabel. Although a trained falconer, the author chose a raptor both unfamiliar and unpredictable, a creature of mad confidence that became a means of working against madness. “The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life,” she writes. As a devotee of birds of prey since girlhood, Macdonald knew the legends and the literature, particularly the cautionary example of The Once and Future King author T.H. White, whose 1951 book The Goshawk details his own painful battle to master his title subject. Macdonald dramatically parallels her own story with White’s, achieving a remarkable imaginative sympathy with the writer, a lonely, tormented homosexual fighting his own sadomasochistic demons. Even as she was learning from White’s mistakes, she found herself very much in his shoes, watching her life fall apart as the painfully slow bonding process with Mabel took over. Just how much do animals and humans have in common? The more Macdonald got to know her, the more Mabel confounded her notions about what the species was supposed to represent. Is a hawk a symbol of might or independence, or is that just our attempt to remake the animal world in our own image? Writing with breathless urgency that only rarely skirts the melodramatic, Macdonald broadens her scope well beyond herself to focus on the antagonism between people and the environment.
Whether you call this a personal story or nature writing, it’s poignant, thoughtful and moving—and likely to become a classic in either genre.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0802123411
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
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