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Title details for Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs by Heather Lende - Available

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs

by Heather Lende
ebook
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While biking downtown, daydreaming about her upcoming tour for If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name (2005), Lende was hit by a truck. Literally. It ran over her torso. So no tour, but the makings of another book, which moves as far beyond the clichés of the hurt-but-heroic personal-triumph genre as Lende's town, Haines, Alaska, is from . . . well, even Juneau and Anchorage, to say nothing of the world outside. What distinguishes it is Lende's relationship with her community and her faith, both of which present challenges as well as comforts. Small town Alaskan life ain't easy. Far too many are lost to alcoholism, weather, violence, and accidents at sea and in the wild. Lende should know: she writes the local paper's obits. Friendships, family, and natural beauty sustain her and other survivors. As for her faith, it isn't always easy, either. So few meet in her Episcopal congregation's borrowed quarters that they have an unpaid vicar rather than a priest. God doesn't always seem to answer; why, for instance, does Lende's beloved mother go down to death still fighting, while an Alaskan friend passes away in beatific calm? Sometimes her moral compass seems to roll around rather than point north. Lende writes emotionally but never sentimentally, giving us the best Alaska memoir of late, maybe the best ever.

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Publisher: Algonquin Books

Kindle Book

  • Release date: September 9, 2010

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781616200084
  • Release date: September 9, 2010

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781616200084
  • File size: 2130 KB
  • Release date: September 9, 2010
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Fiction Literature

Languages

English

While biking downtown, daydreaming about her upcoming tour for If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name (2005), Lende was hit by a truck. Literally. It ran over her torso. So no tour, but the makings of another book, which moves as far beyond the clichés of the hurt-but-heroic personal-triumph genre as Lende's town, Haines, Alaska, is from . . . well, even Juneau and Anchorage, to say nothing of the world outside. What distinguishes it is Lende's relationship with her community and her faith, both of which present challenges as well as comforts. Small town Alaskan life ain't easy. Far too many are lost to alcoholism, weather, violence, and accidents at sea and in the wild. Lende should know: she writes the local paper's obits. Friendships, family, and natural beauty sustain her and other survivors. As for her faith, it isn't always easy, either. So few meet in her Episcopal congregation's borrowed quarters that they have an unpaid vicar rather than a priest. God doesn't always seem to answer; why, for instance, does Lende's beloved mother go down to death still fighting, while an Alaskan friend passes away in beatific calm? Sometimes her moral compass seems to roll around rather than point north. Lende writes emotionally but never sentimentally, giving us the best Alaska memoir of late, maybe the best ever.

Expand title description text
Fiction Literature
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