After the deaths of her father and father-in-law, Laurie Lawlor discovers an unlikely place for healing and transformation in a wetland in southeastern Wisconsin--a landscape of abundant and sometimes inaccessible beauty that has often been ignored, misunderstood, and threatened by human destruction. In her decade-long personal wetland journey, she examines the sky, delves underwater, and peers between sedges in all seasons and all times of day.
" This Tender Place" is a celebration of nature, the elements, and humanity. From the wetland's genesis during the ice age to its survival in the twenty-first century, Lawlor chronicles the universal ties among people, wild places, and healthy wetlands. An engaging and deeply intimate record, "This Tender Place" is at its heart a story of refuge and renewal refracted through the lens of life within the wetlands--one of the most productive, yet most endangered, ecosystems in the world.

Immediately following the Civil War, Billy, a fifteen-year-old runaway, sets out for the gold fields of Virginia City in treacherous Montana Territory. Good fortune for Billy is not so much about finding gold, though, as it is about finding his father. Finding the truth. Before crossing the Missouri River to embark on his journey, two cunning travelers commandeer Billy's life savings of twenty-nine dollars and two bits and convince him to join them as ox-drivers on a team headed with supply wagons for Montana. At first, being paid to make the trip doesn't sound half bad to Billy -- but he quickly discovers that truth never comes cheaply.

The arduous journey tests him for all he's worth. Across miles of arid plains, wild rivers, and steep mountains, Billy struggles to tame his unruly oxen and his own dangerous passions. He must find his place among unlikely traveling companions on a trek through hostile country that conceals Chief Red Cloud's warriors as well as armed highwaymen. Billy's rite of passage challenges everything he knows about survival and loss, reconciliation and discovery.

In this vivid historical novel inspired by the real diaries of photographer William Henry Jackson, award-winning author Laurie Lawlor takes readers on a sweeping quest through the perilous old West.

Many Native Americans photographed by Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) called him Shadow Catcher. But the images he captured were far more powerful than mere shadows. When the twentieth century was just getting underway, Curtis began documenting North American Indian culture in words and photographs. Today, almost one hundred years later, his work still stands as the most extensive and informative collection of its kind. His photographs are more than mere documents; they are works of art revealing subtleties of human expression missing from other historical and anthropological records. Filled with Curtis's breathtaking photographs and available for the first time in a paperback edition, "Shadow Catcher" traces Curtis's life and work from his boyhood in Wisconsin, through his first photo expedition to Alaska in 1897 and the completion of "The North American Indian collection" in 1930, to his death in 1952.