“Williams, the sensitive author of Refuge, is shocked to discover her deceased mother’s unwritten memoirs—shelves worth of blank pages. Under such unpromising circumstances commences a kaleidoscopic celebration and palimpsest—all metaphorical clichés but apt—on finding a voice and woman’s identity beyond the silenced, selfless existence informed by children and a husband—even a family brimming with love . . . ‘If a man knew what a woman never forgets, he would love her differently,’ Williams declares in her bighearted, deliberative hymn: old themes newly warbled.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Each book by ecologist, activist, and writer Williams is an event, so lucid, caring, spirited, and incantatory is her approach to the matrix of nature, place, culture, family, and sense of self . . . Williams is transcendent in her piercing, musical, elegiac, and loving reflections on women’s lives and wilderness, light and shadow, words expressed and words unspoken and invisible.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)