About this item
"What a strange and unexpected treasure chest this is, filled with all manner of quirky revelations, all about the mundane sublime and the ineffable extraordinary. Most extraordinary of all, perhaps, through, is the haunting perfection, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, of the writing itself. Who is this Angela Pelster and where has she been all our lives?"-Lawrence WeschlerAngela Pelster's startling essay collection charts the world's history through its trees: through roots in the ground, rings across wood, and inevitable decay. These sharp and tender essays move from her childhood in rural Canada surrounded by skinny poplar trees in her backyard to a desert in Niger, where the "Loneliest Tree in the World" once grew. A squirrel's decomposing body below a towering maple prompts a discussion of the science of rot, as well as a metaphor for the ways in which nature programs us to consume ourselves.
About the Author
Angela Pelster's most recent book Limber (Sarabande Books 2014) won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer Award in Nonfiction. Limber is a collection of lyric essays loosely based around the subject of trees, but touches on topics as varied as nuclear disaster, the science of rot, lunar landings, the evolution of trees and how to love the world. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Hotel Amerika, Granta, Seneca Review, Fourth Genre and The Gettysburg Review amongst others. Her children's novel The Curious Adventures of India Sophia (River Books, 2005) won the Golden Eagle Children's Choice award. She lives in Baltimore and teaches creative writing at Towson University.
