Rough Beauty
Forty Seasons of Mountain Living
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3.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In the bestselling tradition of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and Helen MacDonald’s H Is for Hawk, Karen Auvinen, an award-winning poet, ventures into the wilderness to seek answers to life’s big questions with “candor [and] admirable courage” (Christian Science Monitor).
Determined to live an independent life on her own terms, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions—except for her beloved dog Elvis, her truck, and a few singed artifacts—Karen embarks on a heroic journey to reconcile her desire to be alone with her need for community.
In the evocative spirit of works by Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, and Terry Tempest Williams, Karen’s “beautiful, contemplative…breathtaking [debut] memoir honors the wildness of the Rockies” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). “Rough Beauty offers a glimpse into a life that’s pared down to its essentials, open to unexpected, even profound, change” (Brevity Magazine), and Karen’s pursuit of solace and salvation through shedding trivial ties and living in close harmony with nature, along with her account of finding community and even love, is sure to resonate with all of us who long for meaning and deeper connection. An “outstanding…beautiful story of resilience” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Rough Beauty is a luminous, lyric exploration, “a narrative that reads like a captivating novel...a voice not found often enough in literature—a woman who eschews the prescribed role outlined for her by her family and discovers her own path” (Christian Science Monitor) to embrace the unpredictability and grace of living intimately with the forces of nature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"In the days after I'd watched my house burn, a great weight lifted," Auvinen writes in this beautiful, contemplative memoir. After a fire destroyed Auvinen's Colorado Front Range Rocky Mountain home and belongings when she was nearly 40, she moved to an isolated mountain community in the same state. "I felt strangely euphoric," she writes, "no longer saddled with counting every penny for rent or bills, unburdened by a house full of goods that required care, cleaning, or mending. Mine was the ecstasy of the unencumbered." She watched the seasons unfold, with Elvis, her faithful dog, at her side. It is Elvis and her vital relationship with him that's at the core of the book. "Elvis had long been my eyes, my ears, but now I realized he was also my guru, my guide: His presence reminded me to play now, sleep now, explore now, be now." Her narrative builds slowly but intensely. Auvinen shares rich details of mountain life: "Living wild succinctly arranges priorities: You make food, take shelter, stay warm," her life lived "like a ritual, equal to meditation or the ritual I had of writing down weather and birds each morning." This breathtaking memoir honors the wildness of the Rockies and shows readers how they might come to rely on their animal companions.
