An Uncommon Field: The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial

by Richard Snodgrass

An Uncommon Field is a celebration and a unique interpretation of the Flight 93 Temporary Memorial that sprang up after 9/11 at the crash site near Shanksville, PA. The dramatic, evocative black-and-white photographs capture the power and magic of this special place as well as the unplanned beauty of the arrangements of personal items that visitors felt compelled to leave behind. In addition, brief prose meditations provide background information on the site and the events of that fateful day, and tell the stories of the author's experiences as he took the photographs over a two-year period in all seasons and weathers. The book is a testament and tribute to the heroes of Flight 93 as well as to the outpourings of support and American spirit from those who came to pay their respects to what happened here. Though the temporary memorial was dismantled in 2009 to make way for the permanent National Memorial, its spirit lives on in this book of uncommon beauty.

168 pages, Hardcover

First published September 11, 2011

About the author

Richard Snodgrass is the critically acclaimed author of the “Books of Furnass” Series, an eleven-volume set of novels that explores the hopes, disappointments, relationships, and betrayals that make up life in a fictional Western Pennsylvania mill town and its surrounding farmlands from the time of the French and Indian War to modern day. The eleventh book in the series, Torn, will be released on September 17, 2025.

Snodgrass is also the author of There’s Something in the Back Yard, published in 1989 by Viking, and praised by Jack Stephens of the Washington Post Book World who wrote, “Observe this mysterious book and be changed.” Other works by Snodgrass include: An Uncommon Field: The Flight 93 Temporary Memorial, published in September of 2011 by Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Kitchen Things: An Album of Vintage Utensils and Farm Kitchen Recipes, published in 2013 by Skyhorse and named one of the year’s “best books to get you thinking about food” by the Associated Press.

Snodgrass’s short stories and essays have appeared in the New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly, South Dakota Review, California Review, Pittsburgh Quarterly, and elsewhere. He is also a master photographer who has been artist-in-residence at LightWorks (University of Syracuse) and at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Richard Snodgrass lives in Pittsburgh, PA, with his wife Marty and two indomitable female tuxedo cats, raised from feral kittens, named Frankie and Becca.

Reviews

[Kim Francis]

A very important part of our 9/11 history. In beautiful and heartbreaking black and white images, Snodgrass documents the personal items and tributes left on the field of Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 crashed on 9/11/01.

[Shilo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prose and photos bring tears to my eyes and give me chills. This is a wonderful book celebrating Flight 93.