Falling into Place

Quietly powerful essays weaving keenly observed insights into the mysteries of nature with those of family and community Its not easy Catherine Reid writes to love a person and a place in equal measure. Love she does however as described in these intimate lyric essays about the land and people around her. With the inside perspective of a native daughter combined with her outsider status as a lesbian Reid explores such paradoxes as those that arise from harnessing wild rivers or legalizing same-sex marriage. Her fascination with natural phenomenawhether bird hibernation the arrival of fishers in suburbia or the explosion of amphibious life in the wet weeks of springis captured in writing that pays as much attention to the sounds of a sentence as to the rhythms of the landscapes she wanders. Ultimately however Reid finds herself having to choose between her lover and her home place. Solace comes from companions as varied as a praying mantis an otter and her hundred-year-old grandmother while resilience shows up in the stories of streams recovering from toxic spills and in communities weathering floods and town meetings. In essays both sensuous and provocative Reid faces the beauty and challenges of our changing world head-on.