Piano Tide - Softcover

Moore, Assistant Professor Of Philosophy Kathleen Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1619025728 ISBN 13: 9781619025721

Publisher: Counterpoint LLC, 2017

Synopsis

2017 WILLA Literary Award Winner in Contemporary Fiction
Short-listed for the ASLE Environmental Creative Book Award

"Moore writes so eloquently and with such passion about the natural world . . . that she leaves the reader in wonder and awe." ―Booklist, starred review

In Piano Tide, the debut novel by award-winning naturalist, philosopher, activist, and author Kathleen Dean Moore, we are introduced to town father Axel Hagerman, who has made a killing in the remote Alaskan town of Good River Harbor by selling off the spruce, the cedar, the herring, and the halibut. But when he decides to export the water from a salmon stream, he runs headlong into young Nora Montgomery, just arrived on the ferry with her piano and her dog. Nora has burned her bridges in the Lower 48, and she aims to disappear into this new homeland, with her piano as her anchor. But when Axel’s next business proposition, a bear pit, turns lethal, Nora has to act. The clash, when it comes, is a spectacular and transformative act of resistance.

About this title

Review:

Praise for Piano Tide
"This is award-winning naturalist, philosopher, and climate activist Moore’s first foray into fiction, and it is not only a remarkably thoughtful and compelling look at the threats to endangered species and the willful destruction of the environment but also a thoroughly engaging tale featuring vividly drawn characters who grab our interest from the very first pages...Moore writes so eloquently and with such passion about the natural world, from tiny tide pool inhabitants to giant grizzlies and towering hemlocks, that she leaves the reader in wonder and awe."  ―Booklist, starred review 
"Piano Tide is about putting a spear into the ground and saying, ‘I will defend this place however I can’; That puts it on the shelf with Monkey Wrench Gang, although Piano Tide is its own book and a damned good one." Dave Foreman, author of The Great Conservation Divide and The Lobo Outback Funeral Home
"Piano Tide joins Ken Kesey’s Sailor Song as one of the great novels of Alaska and its convoluted coast and history. A small group of people making a life in a village by the sea: this is Kathy Moore’s canvas, and she paints a really beautiful, intense, funny and lively portrait of Nora and her new neighbors. How to live in this world? Moore lets us ponder this by way of a great story, in this marvelous debut novel." Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Years of Rice and Salt
"I think Kathleen Dean Moore can do anything including write a savagely funny and deeply insightful novel of the tidepool and rainforest country she knows so well!" Bill McKibben
"Piano Tide captures with remarkable perception the beauty of Alaska, the environmental conflicts that tear at and unite communities, and the interconnectedness of all things. You’ll be swept into this world as if by a turning tide, and you will love the characters human and otherwise you find there. Moore writes from deep knowledge and empathy, with an open heart." Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp, Beluga Days, and Early Warming, and former Alaska Writer Laureate
"An eco-thriller that is both funny and thought-provoking." ―The Bend Bulletin
"Moore's writing is dreamy and rhythmic, lulling as the sea, which murmurs in the background of her story. A prize-winning nature writer who resides in Oregon and spends summers on Chichagof Island, Moore doesn't hold back when it comes to description, and the Southeast Alaska landscape breathes around every page, every character . . . This is a remarkable book, a remarkable story, and if at times the landscape threatens to eclipse the characters, so be it. Because this is also a funny book, with characters so odd and funny, so lovable and flawed that one can't help but think of Steinbeck's Cannery Row." ―Alaska Dispatch News
Praise for Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World
"Reminiscent of the work of Annie Dillard and others who have combined their observations of the natural world with philosophical reflections " Publishers Weekly
"Graceful meditations on nature an altogether satisfying collection by a gifted interpreter of the natural world." Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature
"Kathleen Dean Moore is a writer whose senses, heart, generosity, and intellect open in every direction. This book, filled with knowledge of the natural and human worlds, is a superb naturalist’s handbook. It is also a praise book: an illuminated manuscript whose life overspills its own borders. In its grounded wisdoms, humility, curiosity, and in the kaleidoscope beauty of its descriptions, Wild Comfort reminds how to see, how to sing; how to welcome, with equal gravity and grace, whatever asks entrance into our lives. It is destined to become a classic." Jane Hirshfield
"What nature gives, it takes away. Kathleen Dean Moore feels the ache of this truth in her bones. And yet in spite of grieving over the death of friends, the extinction of species, and the tattering of Earth's web, she finds comfort in natural and human creations, in symphonies and snakes, in science and stars, in the beauty constantly upwelling from the mystery we call life. This book itself is such a consoling creation, a cause for gratitude and joy." Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe
"Moore’s descriptions are powerfully visceral. Readers will find that the world seems larger, wilder, and yet safer than they had thought more beautiful and more like home." Book Page
"This collection of essays, reveries, and meditations interweaves keen observations of the natural world with descriptions of wilderness travel, conversations, stories, and philosophical musings. It is easy to imagine Moore lying next to Plato, intensely focused and observant, pointing out the natural world’s soothing and transformative miracles. She excels at it." The Oregonian
Praise for Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water
"A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place." Terry Tempest Williams

About the Author:

KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE is best known for her books of nature-focused essays―Riverwalking: Reflections on Moving Water, winner of the 1995 Pacific Northwest Book Award; Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World, recipient of the 1999 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award; The Pine Island Paradox, winner of the 2004 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction; Wild Comfort, finalist for the same award; and Great Tide Rising (Counterpoint, 2016).

About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1619025728
• ISBN 13: 9781619025721
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288