Heading Home

by Peter Anderson

Heading Home begins with Peter Anderson's dharma-bum passion for the road, which leads him through the mountains and deserts of the American West, and eventually lands him in an eccentric end-of-the-road town fill of mystics, misfits, and mountain dwellers. This book is a gathering of "field notes"--observations, recollections, and stories along the way, where home is understood as a work in progress and the way is a road that never ends.

Genres: Essays

100 pages, Paperback

Published May 30, 2017

About the author

Peter Anderson’s most recent book is Reading Colorado: A Literary Road Guide. Other books include Heading Home: Field Notes, a collection of flash prose and prose poems exploring rural life and the modern day eccentricities of the American West and First Church of the Higher Elevations, a collection of essays on wildness, mountains, and the life of the spirit. He lives with his family on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado where he launched the Crestone Poetry Festival, an annual gathering of southwestern poets.

Reviews

[J. Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Anderson is one of the most elegant writers I know. His writing is clear, concise, and compelling. His poetry and prose bespeak care and are rooted in the place where he lives -- yet speak to the reader no matter where she or he resides. This small book is, as all of Peter's writings, a blessing.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm pretty much the perfect audience for this smart, gentle book of prose poems/reflections centered in and around the San Luis Valley of Colorado. For over a decade I've been spending as much of my summer as I can manage in the general environs Anderson's writing about and I recognize both the specifics and the atmosphere. At his best, Anderson taps into the lyricism of Richard Hugo's 31 Letters and 13 Dreams, though generally without the harder edges.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of short essays/vignettes describing Anderson's experiences in the West, Sangre de Cristo area of Colorado/New Mexico. Anderson has a good sense of place and communicates the beauty of his home ground very well. I liked this better than another one of his books, "First Church of Higher Elevations."

[JRW Case · Rating 5 out of 5]

About as lyrical as prose can get...

[Jenn Fields]

Peter Anderson has been crisscrossing the American West for years — cruising along in an old bug or beat-up Dodge, following the ribbon of pavement into the horizon even as echoes of Jack Kerouac haunt the rear-view mirror. In this lyric essay collection, Anderson faces Kerouac’s phantom as a man of letters would; he writes to him. Imbued with humanity, poetic in its prose, Heading Home is a book you’ll want to have in your backpack when you hit the road in Colorado this summer. Full review: http://dpo.st/2ssPQf7