Home is the Desert

by Ann Woodin

TRADE PB

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

252 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1984

Reviews

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love books that are part memoir, part paean to nature, though this one is mostly nature with a smattering of children thrown on. Nevertheless, it was a beautifully written portrait of a place and a time. Driven to curiosity to learn more about the author, the internet revealed a few snippets. The book was published in 1964, but by 1970 she was married to someone else, an artist five years younger with whom she moved to an artists’ community where she lived until her death in 2017. She never changed her name from Woodin and wrote two more books. Her ex died in 2018; he had changed obsessions from animals to small arms ammunition.

[Kev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marrying a herpetologist in the lush eastern coastal US prepared her not at all for her husband's field of expertise to lead them to the arid Sonoran desert in south eastern Arizona to raise four boys and grow to love the desert as much if not more than she did her youthful eastern roots upraising.

You'll grow to love it too thru her beautiful writing.

I do & she is the one I point to to explain it to others.

My favorite bits are Jimmy the Raven remembrances. Ravens are scary smart!

[jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This book is one of the best non-fiction books I have read. Educational, and spirited. It made me feel like a kid again, wandering around in the desert for creations, man made and natural. Finding arrowheads and pottery pieces. Being enamored with the volcanic rock formations. Really well written and read."

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nostalgic look back at the desert in the Tucson area, before it was "discovered" and loved nearly to death. It also brought back memories of growing up in the country; although I grew up in a different environment (the woods, lakes and fields of Upstate New York), and had less exciting pets, I felt an afinity for the boys as they discovered the joys of nature.