Presented to: Terry Tempest Williams
For: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place
Of Refuge, the awards committee said, "With this book, Terry Tempest Williams--writer, naturalist, peace activist--defines a new rhetoric for healing. In this beautifully understated and poignant memoir/nature essay, she has woven the story of the rising of the Great Salt Lake, its natural and political ramifications, into the story of her mother's death from cancer in 1987. The author of several previous works of natural history, Terry Tempest Williams here gives voice to a deeply personal side of herself, a gift of passion and integrity both unique in its details and structure, and universal in its messages: that human beings are often devastatingly careless in their use of resources, and must learn not to be; that we can heal from such carelessness when we invest ourselves in nature; and that healing sometimes means accepting death.
"Throughout this book we are privileged to experience the vision of a woman of unusually enlightened consciousness. She reports the problems and mistakes of the state of Utah and its people as pointedly and as accurately as she records birdflight and nesting patterns, showing us that each deserves our careful attention, for different but equally important reasons. She shares conversations with her wise and intelligent mother and grandmother, myths and stories from the Utah desert's Fremont Indian past, and many private rituals, both causal and formal, performed with family and friends in the process of dealing with the destruction this book describes. By honoring the strengths of her Mormon heritage as well as the truths of her experience as a naturalist and an artist, she creates a way of seeing that honors and enlarges the caring best in each of us. We are lucky to have her among us. She and this exquisitely crafted book are cutting-edge.