This is one book that I'm going to keep, not send back out again. Annie Dillard's descriptions of her experiences with nature make the reader think in a larger frame of mind. She brings in many asides that make the reader travel with her as she ponders the absolute immensity and minuteness of the world. I think I will have to reread this book many times to understand and to digest the treasures it holds.

Read All Book Reviews of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

Classic journal of the author's year living in a cabin in the woods, describing Dillard's close-up observations of nature, science, and religion.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a series of interconnected essays which challenge the listener to contemplate the natural world beyond its commonplace surfaces. Dillard's uses beautiful alliterative phrasing, glorious imagery, and inspired themes. An energetic, Thoreauvian ramble through Nature's seasons and secrets. Coming across a cedar tree one day, Dillard sees "the tree with the lights in it," a spiritual phenomenon emblematic of her uncanny way of knowing what is real and true about a universe designed by "a maniac." Cassidy brilliantly conveys Dillard the seer interacting with the grotesque majesties of the scene.

"Here is no gentle romantic twirling a buttercup... Miss Dillard is stalking the reader as surely as any predator stalks its game... Here is not only a habitat of cruelty and 'the waste of pain,' but the savage and magnificent world of the Old Testament, presided over by a passionate Jehovah with no Messiah in sight.... A remarkable psalm of terror and celebration." -- Melvin Maddocks

so good! winner of a pulitzer prize.

Read All Book Reviews of "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"