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A poignant, candid chronicle of a beloved nature writer's fifty-year relationship with an iconic American landscape.Those who have encountered Cape Cod -- or merely dipped into an account of its rich history -- know that it is a singular place. Robert Finch writes of its beaches: "No other place I know sears the heart with such a constant juxtaposition of pleasure and pain, of beauty being born and destroyed in the same moment." And nowhere within its borders is this truth more vivid and dramatic than along the forty miles of Atlantic coast -- what Finch has always known as the Outer Beach. The essays here represent nearly fifty years and a cumulative thousand miles of walking along the storied edge of the Cape's legendary arm.Finch considers evidence of nature's fury: shipwrecks, beached whales, towering natural edifices, ferocious seaside blizzards. And he ponders everyday human interactions conducted in its environment with equal curiosity, wit, and insight: taking a weeks-old puppy for his first beach walk; engaging in a nocturnal dance with one of the Cape's fabled lighthouses; stumbling, unexpectedly, upon nude sunbathers; or even encountering out-of-towners hoping an Uber will fetch them from the other side of a remote dune field.Throughout these essays, Finch pays tribute to the Outer Beach's impressive literary legacy, meditates on its often-tragic history, and explores the strange, mutable nature of time near the ocean. But lurking behind every experience and observation -- both pivotal and quotidian -- is the essential question that the beach beckons every one of its pilgrims to confront: How do we accept our brief existence here, caught between overwhelming beauty and merciless indifference?Finch's affable voice, attentive eye, and stirring prose will be cherished by the Cape's staunch lifers and erstwhile visitors alike, and strike a resounding chord with anyone who has been left breathless by the majestic, unrelenting beauty of the shore. Map



About the Author

Robert Finch

Widely regarded as one of America's leading nature writers, Robert Finch has lived on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, since 1971. He has published seven books of essays and is co-editor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing. His most recent book is A Cape Cod Notebook 2, a second collection of his weekly public radio radio commentaries that have been broadcast since 2005 on WCAI, the Woods Hole NPR affiliate of WGBH, and for which he received the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for Radio Writing in 2005 and 2013. His essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals and his books have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. For his body of work he was named as one of the New England Literary Lights for 1999 by the Associates of the Boston Public Library. In 2001 he received the Non-Fiction Award from the New England Booksellers Association.

Mr. Finch has taught at numerous colleges and writers conferences, including Williams College, Emerson College, Carleton College, Penn State, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. From 2002-2012 Mr. Finch was on the nonfiction faculty of the MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University, Louisville, Kentucky.



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