Wandering Time: Western Notebooks (Camino del Sol)

About this book

Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car several years ago and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop Urrea wandered the West from one years spring through the next. Hiking into aspen forests where leaves "shiver and tinkle like bells" and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of treeshe learned how to live. As nature opened Urreas eyes writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery Urrea ruminates on music poetry and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity he relates tales of marmots geese bears and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air "so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth" and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures ordinary people and common creatures. Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems novels and nonfiction he has explored issues of family race language and poverty with candor compassion and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.