Erosion: Essays on Undoing

Publication October 2019

“....[H]aunting, powerful and brave...”

—Diane Ackerman, The New York Times Book Review

“Beautiful...stunning and heartbreaking....a hybrid of Annie Dillard’s A Writer’s Life and Joan Didion’s A Year of Magical Thinking. [Williams has an] incredible ability to describe the tininess of human beings in relation to the majesty of human nature.”

—Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review podcast

About

Fierce, timely, and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist

Terry Tempest Williams is one of our most impassioned defenders of public lands. A naturalist, fervent activist, and stirring writer, she has spoken to us and for us in books like The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. In these new essays, Williams explores the concept of erosion: of the land, of the self, of belief, of fear. She wrangles with the paradox of desert lands and the truth of erosion: What is weathered, worn, and whittled away through wind, water, and time is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

She looks at the current state of American politics: the dire social and environmental implications of recent choices to gut Bears Ears National Monument, sacred lands to Native People of the American Southwest, and undermine the Endangered Species Act. She testifies that climate change is not an abstraction, citing the drought outside her door and at times, within herself. Images of extraction and contamination haunt her: “oil rigs lighting up the horizon; trucks hauling nuclear waste on dirt roads now crisscrossing the desert like an exposed nervous system.” But beautiful moments of relief and refuge, solace and spirituality come―in her conversations with Navajo elders, art, and, always, in the land itself. She asks, urgently: “Is Earth not enough? Can the desert be a prayer?”

Reviews

Best of Fall 2019 at Newsweek, The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Literary Hub
A Top Ten Book of October at The Washington Post
One of "5 Boss Lady Books of Nonfiction" at BookRiot

"Erosion is a spiritual and profound anthology that could not be more appropriate for our time."
―Juliana Rose Pignataro, Newsweek

“Weaves together personal experiences with the larger world in order to produce shattering emotional truths . . . [Williams] delivers . . . something permanent and beautiful in the face of wanton destruction.”
―Lorraine Berry, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Beautiful . . . stunning and heartbreaking . . . a hybrid of Annie Dillard's The Writing Life and Joan Didion's A Year of Magical Thinking. [Williams has an] incredible ability to describe the tininess of human beings in relation to the majesty of human nature."
―Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times Book Review Podcast

"Terry Tempest Williams is a voice of hope in the dark. In a time where climate change and greed have ravaged everything many of us hold dear, Williams gives us the words to understand it. She makes it easier to feel both the sacredness and pain of grief for an ever-imperiled natural world."
―Gretchen Lida, BookRiot

“Williams marshals dazzling prose to summon activists to resist and revolt.”
―Kitty Kelley, Washington Independent Review of Books

"A must for anyone who loves the desert."
―Emily Temple, Lit Hub

“Explosive and unflinching . . . Erosion is a call to action, a cry in the dark . . . written with the hope . . . that we might honor the earth, our only home, as she continues, even in her diminished state, to teach us.”
―Pam Houston, Alta

"An apostle of life and earth and a soul-revving teller of true stories, Williams (The Hour of Land, 2016) brings lyricism, candor, mystery, and factual exactitude to the deeply affecting essays collected here . . . Williams’ exquisite testimony of wonder and wisdom is vitalizing and crucial."
―Booklist, starred review

"In a collection of passionate, galvanizing essays, activist and teacher Williams shares her intimate connection to the as-yet untamed landscapes of the American West . . . Williams writes with a poetic optimism . . . Stirring."
―Publishers Weekly, starred review

"This anthology of grief, anger, and even hope capably reflects Williams' wise voice."
―Kirkus