ISBN: 1558219315 9781558219311

Category: Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures

Page count: 206

Award-winning writer Marjorie Sandor presents her first nonfiction collection. These twenty essays form a startlingly honest and passionate memoir: of her childhood in Southern California, young married life in Florida, and early motherhood in Montana; of finding "home" in Oregon; of falling in love outside her marriage, leaving her husband, and remaking her life.<p>Sandor is bold and heretical, witty and learned. She brings to these works the electricity and thrilling imagination that inform her highly acclaimed fiction. From fishing in an alligator-infested lake and hiking through grizzly territory to seeking a way to ease her daughter's pain after separating from her husband, she explores wildness and solace in both the outdoors and the mind.<p>"The Night Gardener" is more than a memoir; it is also a quest. Literature, music, fly fishing, gardening as an expression of our deepest selves, and the nature of memory are its subjects. Ultimately, finding the possibility of transcendence through storytelling is Sandor's impressive accomplishment.<p>Each essay is dramatic and beautifully formed -- full of wit and the author's insatiably curious mind. She is a writer of glorious talent, able to wield this last with the control and virtuosity of the true artist.