Overview

An arresting memoir of love and unbending religion, toxicity and disease, and one family’s desperate wait for a miracle that never came. Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn was the oldest of five children, a twelve-year-old from Lubbock, Texas, whose evangelical family eschewed public education for homeschooling, and wove improbable scientific theories into literal interpretations of the Bible. Then her father, a former air force pilot, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of thirty-eight, and, “it was like throwing gasoline on the Holy Spirit.” Stirred by her mother, the family committed to an extreme diet and sought deliverance from equally extreme sources: a traveling tent preacher, a Malaysian holy man, a local faith-healer who led services called “Miracles on 34th Street.” What they didn’t know at the time was that their lives were entangled with a larger, less visible environmental catastrophe. Fire-fighting foams containing carcinogenic compounds had contaminated the drinking water of every military site where her father worked. Commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” the presence of PFAS in West Texas besieged a landscape already burdened with vanishing water, taking up residence in wells and in the bloodstreams of people who lived there. An arresting portrait of the pernicious creep of decline, and a powerful cry for environmental justice, Loose of Earth captures the desperate futility and unbending religious faith that devastated a family, leaving them waiting for a miracle that would never come.

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9781477329627

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Reviews

[A] blazing debut…[Blackburn’s] sentence-level excellence and gift for subtle characterization help this take flight. It’s a formidable portrait of the thin line between faith and delusion. * Publishers Weekly * Loose of Earth is a poignant memoir—at once a family story and a bold exposé of the lasting effects of ‘forever chemicals.’ * Foreword Reviews * “[A] captivating memoir…Loose of Earth is an important read on the precarious state of America, as the dangers of religious fanaticism and the damage humans have caused to the planet continue to creep forward.” * Chicago Review of Books * [A] gimlet-eyed debut...A thoughtful coming-of-age memoir from an American hinterland. * Kirkus *

[A] blazing debut…[Blackburn’s] sentence-level excellence and gift for subtle characterization help this take flight. It’s a formidable portrait of the thin line between faith and delusion. * Publishers Weekly * Loose of Earth is a poignant memoir—at once a family story and a bold exposé of the lasting effects of ‘forever chemicals.’ * Foreword Reviews * Loose [of] Earth is an arresting memoir about love and unbending religion, toxicity and disease, and one family’s desperate wait for a miracle that never came. Blackburn has proven herself an adept essayist, making this a release you don’t want to miss. * Chicago Review of Books *

Author Information

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn teaches in the University of Chicago Creative Writing Program. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and swamp pink, and was listed as notable in Best American Essays.

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