In This We Are Native: On Going Away and Coming Home

by Annick Smith

02 In This We Are Native couples a passionate argument for saving wilderness with a breathtaking memoir of love and loss and rebirth. Smith looks back to tell unflinchingly of her young husband's final year. After a desperate move to seedy Hollywood Boulevard, where they try in vain to break into the movies, they give up, returning to Montana's Blackfoot River Valley just in time. His death left her with four sons to raise alone. And now, decades later, she eloquently mourns her beloved valley when it is brutally clear-cut by corporate logging.

But it is Smith's gift that In This We Are Native is a glorious celebration of life, transcending grief in language exacting and unsentimental. "Here is a woman to admire and love," Annie Dillard wrote of the author. In a voice clear and true, Smith regales us with the joys of huckleberry gathering; the stealth of the mountain lion; rejuvenation in an icy mountain river; and the immense satisfaction of intimacy with wildlands. She rejoices in the preciousness of lovers and family, the gift of travel, and the deep contentment of growing old in a place you love.

Part natural history, part personal revelation, In This We Are Native will place Smith firmly on the map of America's most esteemed women writers.



In This We Are Native couples a passionate argument for saving wilderness with a breathtaking memoir of love and loss and rebirth. Smith looks back to tell unflinchingly of her young husband's final year. After a desperate move to seedy Hollywood Boulevard, where they try in vain to break into the movies, they give up, returning to Montana's Blackfoot River Valley just in time. His death left her with four sons to raise alone. And now, decades later, she eloquently mourns her beloved valley when it is brutally clear-cut by corporate logging.

But it is Smith's gift that In This We Are Native is a glorious celebration of life, transcending grief in language exacting and unsentimental. "Here is a woman to admire and love," Annie Dillard wrote of the author. In a voice clear and true, Smith regales us with the joys of huckleberry gathering; the stealth of the mountain lion; rejuvenation in an icy mountain river; and the immense satisfaction of intimacy with wildlands. She rejoices in the preciousness of lovers and family, the gift of travel, and the deep contentment of growing old in a place you love.

Part natural history, part personal revelation, In This We Are Native will place Smith firmly on the map of America's most esteemed women writers.

Genres: Memoir

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love essays about nature. And death. Smith lives in rural Montana wilderness and meditates on the death of her young husband and the exploitation of the land she loves. I dug it.

[Liesl McQuillan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely musings.