Monkey Dancing
A Father, Two Kids, And A Journey To The Ends Of The Earth
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
After losing his brother to cancer and a painful divorce that left him the sole charge d'affaires of two decidedly spirited children, environmental reporter Daniel Glick knew he and his little family desperately needed some karmic rejuvenation. He opted for an epic adventure. In the summer of 2001, Dan, Zoe, and Kolya packed up and set off on a six-month tour to see the world's most exotic and endangered habitats.
Monkey Dancing takes readers along for this incredible journey. From the python-infested rivers of Borneo to the highest summits of Bali, from Nepal's Gangeatic Plains to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Glick recounts the adventures they met with, the challenges they confronted, and how they learned to cope with grief, loss, and one another. Along the way, he offers intimate reflection on life, fatherhood, change, and the fragile health of our troubled planet.
Acclaimed by reviewers, a BookSense Parenting bestseller, Monkey Dancing is a "poignant, affirming, ultimately courageous book"—Audubon Magazine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After an unexpected, devastating divorce, Glick faced the challenge of bonding with his two children. He handled it by taking his 13-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter on a six-month trip around the world. This unusual, superbly written and deeply human story of their travels is a consistently rewarding odyssey. Glick, an environmental reporter (Newsweek, etc.), writes, "I wanted my kids to share my affection for quiet redwoods and cholla cactus, to swim in mountain lakes and sleep under streaking stars during meteor showers." They move from Australia's Great Barrier Reef to Bali, with its contrasting combinations of spiritual awareness and bargaining for surfboard key rings. Glick highlights Borneo's boiling heat and Indonesia's grinding poverty, along with sojourns in Zurich and Kathmandu. The book is striking both as travelogue and personal drama. Glick's memories of his brother, a victim of rare male breast cancer, weave their way powerfully through the story, along with his despair and confusion over losing his wife to a woman. But Glick doesn't sentimentalize and frankly refers to his children's fights by saying, "f sibling bickering were an art form, these two would be Old Masters," while clearly indicating the love beneath their combativeness. His slowly emerging new romance provides another point of interest and tension. By the time Glick is finished talking of lizards, crocodiles, cassowaries, koalas and kingfishers, even readers who lack the author's raging wanderlust will long to encounter unfamiliar cultures and witness firsthand the tigers of Nepal, the Javan rhinos of Vietnam and the orangutans of Borneo. Photos.
