A Rough Guide To The Heart

Description

In these essays, Pam Houston treats us to a celebration of her real-life adventures which range over five years and five continents. But whatever Houston's destination - whether Bhutan or Bolivia or Traverse City - it is only the starting point from which she extracts her personal emotional journey. She is searching here for a place - not too safe but not too threatening - from which to negotiate mountain goats and river ice, camping trips and wine. Through her we meet some good dogs, a few good men, and the occasional grizzly. There's a horse named Roany with the presence of a Zen master. And there's a Buddhist named Karma, all proving what Houston has always suspected: fiction has nothing on real life.

Pam Houston is a part-time river and hunting guide, but not a hunter. She lives in a high valley in Colorado, a place she calls the Roof of America.

Beautiful and perceptive travel pieces .. .elegantly written * THE TIMES * A first-rate piece of travel-journalism, written in the lush, evocative style of an outdoor mystic * LITERARY REVIEW * A remarkable woman. Her descriptions of desert dawns and endless skies are evocative and beautiful * SUNDAY TIMES *