Reviews
<b>Praise for <i>Trace</i> </b> <b>Recipient of the 2016 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation</b> An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscapeand her own rootsin this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. <i>The Huffington Post</i> a thoughtful collection of essays ... Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own. ... her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking ... the close read is worth the effort. <i>Boston Globe</i> Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. <i>Trace</i> is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America s tripartite legacy natives, African slaves, and European settlers she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. <i>Vulture</i> [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. <i>Booklist</i> In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy ... meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy s deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. <i>Publishers Weekly</i> Savoy's well-researched account, which includes numerous lyric eyewitness descriptions of place, also delves into recently declassified National Archives records to note how prisoners of war 'expressed to the nurses their surprise that Americans would fight to preserve democracy abroad and at home exhibit prejudice to other Americans solely because of their skin color.' Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. <i>Kirkus Starred Review</i> Lauret Savoy's <i>Trace</i> is one of the most extraordinary books I've read in a long time, a book about landmarkshow the land is markedthat in itself may be something of a landmark. With searching, smart, arrestingly beautiful writing, she tells stories of places, their names, their layers, and the ways history covers, alters, shifts the stories of people within them. That she does so bringing race and ethnicity into it makes this an even more singular, vital, necessary book. Writing of her own family mysteries and wayfaring within larger racial, social, and cultural contexts in a way that is, at once, intimate and personal, and larger and more universal, Lauret Savoy has given us an invaluable work of better knowing our past, seeing our present, imagining our future. Rick Simonson, <i>Elliott Bay Book Company</i> Savoy...successfully leads readers on an illuminating journey through historyher own and her ancestors, U.S. native and nonnative peoples, and the country s, via insights on varied American landscapes and cultural and personal narratives. Savoy s immersive, accessible, and evocative narrative interweaves questions of morality, social justice, and stewardship of the land we call home with discussions of history and the American landscape and will interest readers of history, social science, and earth science. <i>Library Journal</i> <i>Trace</i> has passages of really exceptional beauty. I found myself marking sentences here and there, just for their poetry and depth. And the interweaving of Lauret Savoy s awakening to geographyher own and the planet sis powerful and fresh. C. S. Manegold, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of <i>Ten Hills Farm</i> <i>Trace</i> is must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now. Heaven help those who follow. In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America s natural landscapes her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. Trace cuts more than one gleaming, sharp-toothed key to help unlock some of the hard questions that challenge and haunt the environmental and climate-change movements. Why does toxic waste get dumped onto poor neighborhoods, poor communities, debt-drowned nations? Why should any darker-skinned citizen feel vulnerable to violence or abuse while hiking or camping in America s remote playgrounds or rural settings? Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist How does one find a home among ruins and shards? That might be the question that leads Lauret Savoy to follow traces of life s past in landscapes, rivers, fossils and graveyards as she works to undo the silences of our nation s wounded history. As an Earth historian, she reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. Alison Hawthorne Deming, Author of <i>Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit</i> We have waited a very long time for Trace by Lauret Savoy. Too long. Her words are a stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. <i>Trace</i> is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. Terry Tempest Williams, author of <i>When Women Were Birds</i>, <i>Finding Beauty in a Broken World</i>, and <i>Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place</i> With a voice that is both lyrical and authoritative, this important illuminating book might be thought of as a map, or a group of maps laid out edge to edge...This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation bout race. John Elder, author of <i>Reading the Mountains of Home</i> and <i>Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa</i>, editor of the encyclopedia <i>American Nature Writers</i>, and co-editor of <i>The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing</i> The personal manner and historical scenes are concise, explicit, and marvelous...the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. Julian Agyeman, author of <i>Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice</i> The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. Scott Russell Sanders, author of <i>A Private History of Awe</i> and <i>A Conservationist Manifesto</i>
Winner of the American Book Award (from the Before Columbus Foundation) Winner of the ASLE Environmental Creative Writing Award Finalist for the PEN American Open Book Award Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Shortlisted for the Orion Book Award A thoughtful collection of essays . . . Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own . . . her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking . . . the close read is worth the effort. --The Boston Globe Blends memoir, history, and the landscape to uncover hidden legacies. It will create seismic shifts in readers' perspectives on race, gender, and nature. --Kathryn Aalto, BuzzFeed Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. Trace is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America's tripartite legacy--natives, African slaves, and European settlers--she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. --Vulture An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscape--and her own roots--in this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. --The Huffington Post [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. --Booklist In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy . . . meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy's deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. --Publishers Weekly Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. --Kirkus (starred review) A stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. Trace is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. --Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place Must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now . . . In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America's natural landscapes . . . her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. --Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist As an Earth historian, [Savoy] reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit Lyrical and authoritative . . . This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation about race. --John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, editor of the encyclopedia American Nature Writers, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing Concise, explicit, and marvelous . . . the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. --Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. --Julian Agyeman, author of Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe and A Conservationist Manifesto
<b>Praise for <i>Trace</i> </b> <b>Recipient of the 2016 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation</b> An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscape--and her own roots--in this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. --<i>The Huffington Post</i> a thoughtful collection of essays ... Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own. ... her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking ... the close read is worth the effort. --<i>Boston Globe</i> Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. <i>Trace</i> is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America's tripartite legacy -- natives, African slaves, and European settlers -- she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. --<i>Vulture</i> [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. --<i>Booklist</i> In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy ... meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy's deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. --<i>Publishers Weekly</i> Savoy's well-researched account, which includes numerous lyric eyewitness descriptions of place, also delves into recently declassified National Archives records to note how prisoners of war 'expressed to the nurses their surprise that Americans would fight to preserve democracy abroad and at home exhibit prejudice to other Americans solely because of their skin color.' Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. --<i>Kirkus Starred Review</i> Lauret Savoy's <i>Trace</i> is one of the most extraordinary books I've read in a long time, a book about landmarks--how the land is marked--that in itself may be something of a landmark. With searching, smart, arrestingly beautiful writing, she tells stories of places, their names, their layers, and the ways history covers, alters, shifts the stories of people within them. That she does so bringing race and ethnicity into it makes this an even more singular, vital, necessary book. Writing of her own family mysteries and wayfaring within larger racial, social, and cultural contexts in a way that is, at once, intimate and personal, and larger and more universal, Lauret Savoy has given us an invaluable work of better knowing our past, seeing our present, imagining our future. --Rick Simonson, <i>Elliott Bay Book Company</i> Savoy...successfully leads readers on an illuminating journey through history---her own and her ancestors', U.S. native and nonnative peoples', and the country's, via insights on varied American landscapes and cultural and personal narratives. Savoy's immersive, accessible, and evocative narrative interweaves questions of morality, social justice, and stewardship of the land we call home with discussions of history and the American landscape and will interest readers of history, social science, and earth science. --<i>Library Journal</i> <i>Trace</i> has passages of really exceptional beauty. I found myself marking sentences here and there, just for their poetry and depth. And the interweaving of Lauret Savoy's awakening to geography--her own and the planet's--is powerful and fresh. --C. S. Manegold, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of <i>Ten Hills Farm</i> <i>Trace</i> is must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now. Heaven help those who follow. In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America's natural landscapes... her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. Trace cuts more than one gleaming, sharp-toothed key to help unlock some of the hard questions that challenge and haunt the environmental and climate-change movements. Why does toxic waste get dumped onto poor neighborhoods, poor communities, debt-drowned nations? Why should any darker-skinned citizen feel vulnerable to violence or abuse while hiking or camping in America's remote playgrounds or rural settings? --Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist How does one find a home among ruins and shards? That might be the question that leads Lauret Savoy to follow traces of life's past in landscapes, rivers, fossils and graveyards as she works to undo the silences of our nation's wounded history. As an Earth historian, she reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. --Alison Hawthorne Deming, Author of <i>Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit</i> We have waited a very long time for Trace by Lauret Savoy. Too long. Her words are a stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. <i>Trace</i> is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. -- Terry Tempest Williams, author of <i>When Women Were Birds</i>, <i>Finding Beauty in a Broken World</i>, and <i>Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place</i> With a voice that is both lyrical and authoritative, this important illuminating book might be thought of as a map, or a group of maps laid out edge to edge...This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation bout race. --John Elder, author of <i>Reading the Mountains of Home</i> and <i>Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa</i>, editor of the encyclopedia <i>American Nature Writers</i>, and co-editor of <i>The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing</i> The personal manner and historical scenes are concise, explicit, and marvelous...the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. --Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. --Julian Agyeman, author of <i>Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice</i> The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of <i>A Private History of Awe</i> and <i>A Conservationist Manifesto</i>
Winner of the American Book Award (from the Before Columbus Foundation) Winner of the ASLE Environmental Creative Writing Award Finalist for the PEN American Open Book Award Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Shortlisted for the Orion Book Award A landmark text --Robert Macfarlane A thoughtful collection of essays . . . Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own . . . her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking . . . the close read is worth the effort. --The Boston Globe Blends memoir, history, and the landscape to uncover hidden legacies. It will create seismic shifts in readers' perspectives on race, gender, and nature. --Kathryn Aalto, BuzzFeed Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. Trace is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America's tripartite legacy--natives, African slaves, and European settlers--she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. --Vulture An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscape--and her own roots--in this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. --The Huffington Post [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. --Booklist In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy . . . meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy's deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. --Publishers Weekly Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. --Kirkus (starred review) A stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. Trace is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. --Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place Must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now . . . In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America's natural landscapes . . . her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. --Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist As an Earth historian, [Savoy] reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit Lyrical and authoritative . . . This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation about race. --John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, editor of the encyclopedia American Nature Writers, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing Concise, explicit, and marvelous . . . the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. --Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. --Julian Agyeman, author of Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe and A Conservationist Manifesto Winner of the American Book Award (from the Before Columbus Foundation) Winner of the ASLE Environmental Creative Writing Award Finalist for the PEN American Open Book Award Shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award Shortlisted for the Orion Book Award A thoughtful collection of essays . . . Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own . . . her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking . . . the close read is worth the effort. --The Boston Globe Blends memoir, history, and the landscape to uncover hidden legacies. It will create seismic shifts in readers' perspectives on race, gender, and nature. --Kathryn Aalto, BuzzFeed Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. Trace is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America's tripartite legacy--natives, African slaves, and European settlers--she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. --Vulture An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscape--and her own roots--in this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. --The Huffington Post [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. --Booklist In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy . . . meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy's deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. --Publishers Weekly Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. --Kirkus (starred review) A stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. Trace is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. --Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place Must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now . . . In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America's natural landscapes . . . her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. --Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist As an Earth historian, [Savoy] reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit Lyrical and authoritative . . . This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation about race. --John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, editor of the encyclopedia American Nature Writers, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing Concise, explicit, and marvelous . . . the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. --Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. --Julian Agyeman, author of Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe and A Conservationist Manifesto
Praise for Trace Winner of the ASLE Creative Writing AwardRecipient of the 2016 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation An earth historian by trade, Lauret Savoy journeys through the landscape--and her own roots--in this sweeping book that's part memoir, part travelogue, part scientific text. Savoy digs into her Native American, European and African-American history and maps her discoveries against our thoughts about place in this fascinating book. --The Huffington Post a thoughtful collection of essays ... Savoy raises more questions than she answers, but they are the kind of questions that provoke discussion. This is not a book to be read quickly. Rather, each of the eight essays deserves consideration on its own. ... her images are often poetic and her personal revelations can be striking ... the close read is worth the effort. --Boston Globe Savoy is a geologist at Mount Holyoke, but this sui generis creation, wherein John McPhee meets James Baldwin, dissolves all academic boundaries. Trace is a memoir, a meditation on landscape and identity, and a travelogue with a mission. 'As an Earth historian, ' writes Savoy, 'I once sought the relics of deep time. To be an honest woman, I must trace other residues of hardness.' Digging for her family roots in America's tripartite legacy -- natives, African slaves, and European settlers -- she unearths some genealogy, but more fruitful are the connections she makes between philosophy, ecology, and race. --Vulture [An] illuminating treatise . . . 'Each told fact holds meaning to the recorder, and each historical narrative (re)presents accidental and deliberate silences or omissions, ' Savoy writes. As she assuredly shows, these silences can be telling, reminding us to watch for bias, and that when it comes to interpreting history, the viewing lens is almost as important as the narrative. --Booklist In reverential, elegiac prose, Savoy ... meditates on the meaning of history and identity as related to place. Savoy's deep knowledge of the land opens up intriguing new avenues for exploring the multifaceted, tumultuous nature of American identity. --Publishers Weekly Savoy's well-researched account, which includes numerous lyric eyewitness descriptions of place, also delves into recently declassified National Archives records to note how prisoners of war 'expressed to the nurses their surprise that Americans would fight to preserve democracy abroad and at home exhibit prejudice to other Americans solely because of their skin color.' Springing from the literal Earth to metaphor, Savoy demonstrates the power of narrative to erase as easily as it reveals, yielding a provocative, eclectic expose of the palimpsest historically defining the U.S. as much as any natural or man-made boundary. --Kirkus Starred Review Lauret Savoy's Trace is one of the most extraordinary books I've read in a long time, a book about landmarks--how the land is marked--that in itself may be something of a landmark. With searching, smart, arrestingly beautiful writing, she tells stories of places, their names, their layers, and the ways history covers, alters, shifts the stories of people within them. That she does so bringing race and ethnicity into it makes this an even more singular, vital, necessary book. Writing of her own family mysteries and wayfaring within larger racial, social, and cultural contexts in a way that is, at once, intimate and personal, and larger and more universal, Lauret Savoy has given us an invaluable work of better knowing our past, seeing our present, imagining our future. --Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company Savoy...successfully leads readers on an illuminating journey through history---her own and her ancestors', U.S. native and nonnative peoples', and the country's, via insights on varied American landscapes and cultural and personal narratives. Savoy's immersive, accessible, and evocative narrative interweaves questions of morality, social justice, and stewardship of the land we call home with discussions of history and the American landscape and will interest readers of history, social science, and earth science. --Library Journal Trace has passages of really exceptional beauty. I found myself marking sentences here and there, just for their poetry and depth. And the interweaving of Lauret Savoy's awakening to geography--her own and the planet's--is powerful and fresh. --C. S. Manegold, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Ten Hills Farm Trace is must-reading for anyone who cares still about life on earth right here and now. Heaven help those who follow. In her contemplative essay, Lauret Savoy locates, relocates and celebrates the majesty of America's natural landscapes... her loving, exhaustless examination of American language alone distinguishes this quietly powerful, nuanced, well-lit reflection. Trace cuts more than one gleaming, sharp-toothed key to help unlock some of the hard questions that challenge and haunt the environmental and climate-change movements. Why does toxic waste get dumped onto poor neighborhoods, poor communities, debt-drowned nations? Why should any darker-skinned citizen feel vulnerable to violence or abuse while hiking or camping in America's remote playgrounds or rural settings? --Al Young, former Poet Laureate of California, novelist, essayist How does one find a home among ruins and shards? That might be the question that leads Lauret Savoy to follow traces of life's past in landscapes, rivers, fossils and graveyards as she works to undo the silences of our nation's wounded history. As an Earth historian, she reads the land with an informed eye. As a woman of mixed heritage, she reads into the land the lives of enslaved laborers and displaced tribes. This is a work of conscience and moral conviction. Reading it I understood how the land holds the memory of our history and how necessary it is to listen to its many voices. --Alison Hawthorne Deming, Author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit We have waited a very long time for Trace by Lauret Savoy. Too long. Her words are a stunning excavation and revelation of race, identity, and the American landscape. I have never read a more beautiful, smart, and vulnerable accounting of how we are shaped by memory in place. This braiding of personal history with geology and the systematic erasure of Other in pursuit of Manifest Destiny is a stratigraphy of conscience and consciousness. What Lauret Savoy creates on the page is as breathtaking as the view she saw as a child as she stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon with her parents and learned land does not hate, people do. I stand in awe of Lauret Savoy's wisdom and compassionate intelligence. Trace is a crucial book for our time, a bound sanity, not a forgiveness, but a reckoning. -- Terry Tempest Williams, author of When Women Were Birds, Finding Beauty in a Broken World, and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place With a voice that is both lyrical and authoritative, this important illuminating book might be thought of as a map, or a group of maps laid out edge to edge...This is a book that will promote and help shape our nation's urgent conversation bout race. --John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa, editor of the encyclopedia American Nature Writers, and co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing The personal manner and historical scenes are concise, explicit, and marvelous...the gentle deconstruction of the historical sources is truly moving, potent, and convincing. --Gerald Vizenor, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas Lauret Savoy's writing reveals both the pain and the hope located in landscape, place, and name. It is a wonderfully powerful and deeply personal exploration of herself, through this American landscape. --Julian Agyeman, author of Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice The narrator is an engaging figure, sharing with us her process of discovery, conveying her indignation without stridency (although stridency would have been justified), tracing her research, acknowledging her uncertainties, suggesting why this quest matters so deeply to herself and why it should matter to us. --Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe and A Conservationist Manifesto
