Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place (1991)
By Terry Tempest Williams
--Kansas City Star
Refuge:
An Unnatural History of Family and Place
Pantheon Books
September, 1991, Hardcover.
ISBN: 0-679-40516-X
Refuge:
An Unnatural Historyof Family and Place
Vintage
September, 1992. Trade Paperback.
ISBN: 0-679-74024-4
REFUGE was released in a new paperback edition with a special afterword to celebrate the 10th Anniversary Edition in Fall, 2001, by Vintage.
ABOUT THIS BOOK
As Utah-born naturalist Terry Tempest Williams records the simultaneous tragedies of her mother's death of cancer and the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Sanctuary, she creates a document of renewal and spiritual grace destined to become a classic in the literature of nature, women, and grieving.
Disaster is at the center of this haunting book by Utah naturalist Williams (Pieces of White Shell, 1984), as the Great Salt Lake rises to break all records, submerging roads and driving the resident wildlife away, and as the author's mother dies of cancer at age 53. In the case of the lake, there's no one to blame except the developers who have so despoiled the wilderness that there's nowhere left for fugitive wildlife to go; in the case of Williams's mother, it's difficult not to blame the federal government. After her mother's death, Williams tells her father about a recurring dream of a blinding flash of light; he informs her that she actually saw it: an above-ground detonation of a bomb that she witnessed as a child while sitting on her pregnant mother's lap, innocent spectators trusting their government to protect their welfare. But, in fact, federal policy in the 50's dictated the confining of nuclear testing to a ``virtually uninhabited'' section of the country, considering that an adequate safeguard. Six aunts, a grandmother, the author's mother, countless neighbors in the Mormon community in which Williams was raised--all cancer victims- -were some of these ``virtual uninhabitants,'' Williams says. It is worth enduring the heartbreak of this intimately observed death in order to reach the author's culminating insight into the place where her only refuge from such grief lies. Williams's evocations of the austere beauty of the Utah desert, the Great Salt Lake, and their wildlife also offer great rewards. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Related Links:
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge.
Passages from Refuge read by Terry Tempest Williams are available on CD, in collaboration with musicians David Darling and Nancy Rumbel, by Wind Over the Earth music. Hear two audio clips from this CD in Real Audio format (requires plugin). Track 9 (1:05). Track 11 (1:14).
The Utah Rivers Council has done a lot of work to protect the Bear River from dams that would decimate bird habitat.
April 29, 2002, feature article in High Country News entitled "The Great Salt Lake Mystery," by Tim Westby, about the ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake.
May 1994 reading of Refuge, this article is about Terry Tempest Williams' visit to UC Davis.
Article from The Salt Lake Tribune Sunday, April 25, 1999. Abramyan Plays Bimstein's Take on Tempest Williams by Catherine Reese Newton. The Abramyan String Quartet premieres composer Phillip Bimstein's interpretation of Terry Tempest Williams' Refuge.
Excerpt Clan of One Breasted Women, epilogue to Refuge. Clan of the One-Breasted Women was originally published in Northern Lights, January 1990, Volume VI, No. 1.
Photos from Bear River by photographer Don Baccus.
Nevada Test Site.
U.S. Dept. of Energy.
Federation of American Scientists.
Common Marsh Birds of Northern Utah.
Great Basin Web.
Utah Birds.
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