In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Poet Kim Barnes grew up in northern Idaho, in the isolated camps where her father worked as a logger and her mother made a home for her husband and two children. Their lives were short on material wealth, but long on the riches of family, friendship, and the great sheltering power of the wilderness. But in the mid-1960s, as automation and a declining economy drove more and more loggers out of the wilderness and into despair, Barnes's father dug in, and his determination to stay fueled the family's turn toward Pentecostalism.

Winner of the 1995 PEN/Jerard Fund Award, In the Wilderness is this poet's account of a journey toward adulthood against an interior landscape as awesome, as wondrous, and as fraught with hidden peril as the great Idaho forest itself. It is an examination of how both geography and faith can shape the heart and soul, and of the uncharted territory we all must enter to face our own demons. It is the clear-eyed and deeply moving story of a young woman's coming to terms with her family, her homeland, her spirituality, and herself.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 02/17/1997
ISBN: 9780385478212
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 8.08h x 5.36w x 0.61d
Award: Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award - Winner
Award: Idaho Library Association Book Award - Honorable Mention