Desert Oracle
Volume 1: Strange True Tales from the American Southwest
-
-
4.0 • 8 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
Uncover the Mysteries of the Mojave: The Definitive Guide to the Desert's Secrets, Legends, and Oddities
For the past five years, Desert Oracle has been a cult-favorite periodical, captivating readers with its unique blend of strange tales, desert lore, and paranormal phenomena. Now, for the first time, this essential guide to the American Southwest is available in a single volume, featuring both classic and never-before-seen revelations.
Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is your companion on a journey through the sagebrush trails, ghost towns, and modern legends of the Mojave. From the myths and mysteries of the desert to the artists, authors, and oddballs who call it home, Ken Layne's Desert Oracle is a must-have for anyone fascinated by the weird and wonderful of the American Southwest.
Inside, you'll find musings on desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, alongside journal entries of long-deceased adventurers and forgotten railroad ad copy. Whether you're huddled around a campfire or exploring from the comfort of your living room, Desert Oracle is the perfect guide to the echoes of the wind and the howls of the coyotes in the vast expanses of the desert night.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Layne (Dignity) delivers a playful potpourri of lore, obscure facts, geographic meditations, and conservationist advocacy in this eclectic collection of desert-themed essays. The author presents the desert as a home worthy of protecting and suggests it is a source of meaning. "There is purpose waiting out here, for anyone who comes in honest pursuit of it," he writes in the introduction, and the essays that follow tell how he and others found such purpose. An empathetic essay on "wandering philosopher" Edward Abbey imagines wilderness as "a haven for outlaws," and essays on UFOs and the Yucca Man tackle myths with humor and curiosity. Several pieces provide something of a cultural history of the American Southwest, covering the legacy of Marty Robbins's western music, William Burroughs's time in Los Alamos, and the cultish "Solar Lodge." Layne concludes with a poetically pitched message to keep the desert "a wild, open landscape available for our encounters with the mysterious and the divine." With his succinct, descriptive, narrative-driven prose, Layne creates a fascinating homage to the beauty of an often unforgiving landscape.
