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FINALIST for the 2021 Oregon Book Award. Rooted in the Pacific
Northwest, the essays in Ruby McConnell’s Ground Truth: A
Geological Survey of a Life cover the vast terrain of this region
– from volcanoes to city parks, the eroding shorelines along the
Oregon coast, badlands, lush forests, and city parks. Combining her
background as a registered geologist, McConnell’s essays also
weave in personal landscapes composed of grief, loss, and optimism
for the future of our environment. "The Pacific Northwest that you
see today is the result of forty years of radical changes in the
culture and economics of what was once a resource-extraction and
agriculture-driven region. They are changes so fundamental in
nature and scope...that, for those of us from this place, will
always be marked by the cataclysmic eruptions of Mt. St. Helens on
May 18, 1980." --Ruby McConnell In this collection of 17 essays,
geologist Ruby McConnell opens her part natural history, part
memoir-in-essays about the Pacific Northwest with the cataclysmic
eruption of Mt. St. Helens in May of 1980. She was two years old.
"Everything that I have stood direct witness to since, everything I
know about this place, happened after we watched the mountain
crumble... I was born to a region digging out." In poignant and
wide-ranging essays that include the wondrous annual return of
salmon, "the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest people," to working
at an elementary school evaluating soil and wondering how many kids
have cancer, Ground Truth is an extended eulogy to a rapidly
changing land, population and society awakening to the realities of
logging, climate change, land-use and pollution. The book
illuminates the central role of landscapes in our ideas of home and
self despite the growing disconnect between modern lifestyle and
the environment. McConnell's timely and significant work reveals
how the landscapes we inhabit can also help us better understand
ourselves.
A 2019 New York Times Top Summer Read Finalist, Oregon Book Award
2020 Liz Prato combines lyricism, research and humor to explore her
role as a white tourist in a seemingly paradisiacal land that has
been largely formed and destroyed by white outsiders. Hawaiian
history, pop culture, and contemporary affairs are masterfully
woven with her personal narrative of loss and survival in linked
essays, offering unique insight into how the touristic ideal of
Hawai‘i came to be, and what Hawai‘i is at its core.
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