Reviews + Endorsements
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What reviewers are saying:
There's a new review of the book at the well-respected site for writing by women, Story Circle Book Reviews. Click here to enjoy.
Book Chat by Cindy Bellinger, author, editor, gardener in July issue of Enchantment Magazine. Click here for review.
Steven McFadden: The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century
http://thecalloftheland.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/the-land-our-gift-and-wild-hope/
Susan J. Tweit, author of Walking Nature Home, A Life's Journey, on her blog: susanjtweit.com Books: Three Women Three Voices
Endorsements
"You can best serve civilization," Wendell Berry once wrote, "by being against what usually passes for it." By such a reckoning, Rae Marie Taylor is a truly civilized artist. Her passionate love of the Southwest and her grief at the destruction that has been inflicted on its landscapes and cultures shine through this book. It offers a deeply personal witness to the power of the land and the force of American ideals. In the midst of our devastation, she manages to celebrate. In the midst of sorrow, she finds a hard-won hope.
—Mark Abley
Author of Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Language
Rae Taylor's poignant and uneasy love affair with the American West testifies to the endurance of hope even as the narrow logic of economics, like a geologic force, erodes all things in its path.
—Bill deBuys
Author of River of Traps and A Great Aridness
One of the great attractions of the American Southwest is its stark blend of slow-moving natural beauty with frenetic human energy. Sometimes the two forces mesh well, as when ranchers and other land-based peoples work cooperatively with the land; but sometimes they clash, often with tragic consequences. Rae Marie Taylor captures the complicated relationship between people and land in the Southwest with a sweeping sense of history, humor, and insight. For anyone who wants to understand where this relationship is headed in the twenty-first century, I recommend reading this book.
—Courtney White
Author of Revolution on the Range and cofounder of the Quivira Coalition
Rae Taylor explores her love of the West in eloquent and gracious passages that weave together life experiences with wisdom gleaned from a lifetime of careful attention to the land. "A body needs the earth," Taylor writes, finding inspiration in Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. "It is a question of habitat." For Taylor, The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope is a habitat of the heart, carefully cultivated with tough love during years spent in Colorado and New Mexico. For the reader, the book is an invitation to contemplate your own relationship with the land and with the cultures that have formed you
—Page Lambert
Author of the best-selling memoir In Search of Kinship and
senior associate with the Children & Nature Network
Charmed, intrigued, educated, outraged, uplifted, enchanted, activated—all these soul states await readers who journey with Rae Marie Taylor through the pages of The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope.
—Steven McFadden
Author of The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer
for the 21st Century and Farms of Tomorrow
"Querencia," a Spanish word that is hard to translate into English, identifies both the love of that particular spot in the world where one feels safe and grounded and the instinct to return to it. The Land is a book about querencia, Rae Marie Taylor's return after many years to her beloved New Mexico only to find it, like so many sacred places in the American West, changed almost beyond recognition by development and materialism. But this is also a hopeful book, filled not only with an articulate call to heal the West but with the stories of people and organizations that are doing just that, healing not only the land but themselves. Taylor has a great heart, evident on every page.
—Teresa Jordan
Author of Riding the White Horse Home
Rae Taylor's book speaks to our identity, indeed to our very soul, which is deeply embedded in the lands we know and love. Her descriptions of the acute, heart-breaking loss of physical place and cultural space with the wounding of spirit that comes from that loss, are balanced by dynamic stories of hope and healing that provide nourishment and strength to continue to protect and live a wholeness with the lands. Her writing is firmly grounded in the land and waters of the American West, as she tells stories of people and community who provide stewardship, reflecting a reciprocity of being one with the land, creating what she calls "a homeland of spirit."
—Nancy C. Maryboy, PhD
President and Executive Director
Indigenous Education Institute
What readers are saying:
This is a courageous book.
—Victoria Garcia Caffrey
Political Scientist,
San Antonio, Texas
WOW!!! is my reaction. I read The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope in less than two days. It was hard to put down. The writing is lyrical and so evocative. The writer has a great ability to put the reader in the place—something that has made me evaluate relationships between people and land when listening to a story on the radio or reading one.
—Harriet Mullaney
One who has adopted the Rocky Mountain West as her own
(after having lived in three other time zones). Denver, Colorado
Thank you so much for your book. I have read it several times already. It is really terrific; I now read a few passages each day for inspiration. I loved the ones about the cabin the most.
—Barbara Stanislawski
Museum Curator (retired)
Santa Fe, NM
What I have read of The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope is marvelous. It tells so much about the writer's dedication to both Colorado and New Mexico.
—PJ Manion
Sister of Loretto, Author
Kentucky
I am captured by your experience growing up - the changes in the landscape - the juxtaposition of Southwest to Quebec. I loved it!
—Terry Solowey
Educational Media Specialist, Writer
NewYork, NY
The different aspects of the cover, the design suggesting First Nations, the photograph and the title all combine to offer something truly satisfying…The book's fascinating and so adventurous it takes my breath away!
—Christina Gordon
Retired teacher
Garneau College
Quebec City, Quebec
Dans ce livre inspirant, le regard poétique de Rae Marie Taylor nous fait voir les paysages radieux de son enfance dans le sud-ouest américain. Mais au-delà de la beauté sauvage qu'elle célèbre, elle nous apporte aussi, à travers l'histoire passée et récente de cette terre, une vision inédite et touchante du lien fondamental, à la fois matériel et spirituel, entre une communauté humaine et le milieu physique où elle plonge ses racines.
—Lise Dunnigan
Professionnelle de recherche en santé publique (retraitée),
Quebec
J'ai terminé la lecture de The Land: Our Gift and Wild Hope. Quel travail de recherche, d'analyse et de sensibilité. Toutes mes félicitations!
—Louise Simard,
auteure
Sherbrooke, QC
C'est nouveau, c'est à dire du jamais dit, c'est pertinent et original. ~
—Catherine Fortin
biologiste
St. Jean Port Jolie, QC
