Publications

Savor this antidote for despair regarding our endless manipulation of nature, but also share a sense of old-time lifestyles and wild places that remain. In Relic, Williams doesn’t just write about a lone mule deer, soft brown eyes of horses and the windswept Oregon desert, she shares the bittersweet feelings of leaving the country’s wild places and tall tales for city living. This book is for anyone longing for lost places still wild and free with no traffic lights.

- James Bishop Jr.

Lorena Williams’s “Relic” is a low-voiced testament to roots. In spare, steady prose, Williams takes a peripheral approach to the central themes of home and heartland. Mining the material remnants of her past, she holds these old bones to the light of new directions and casts a considering eye on futures we foretell for our own peace of mind. The spaces we create and abandon hold a steady center in “Relic,” sketched out in simple observations of people and place. Our origins demand recounting, and Williams honors that call with honest snapshots of gravity and grit.

- Hanna Kreitzer