Category: Belonging

Review: Halfway from Home

2/1/2023

Full Circle Journey
Review: Halfway from Home

Frank Penick

Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Nonfiction
Split Lip Press, pp. 193
Cost: $16.00 (Paperback)

Sarah Fawn Montgomery's Halfway from Home is an intensely personal journey that flashes a reflective mirror upon American society exposing our collective imperfections and scars. Ever searching for clarity and reconciliation, Montgomery writes: “When I fly home to California from where I live in Massachusetts, crossing time zones and great distances like a space traveler, I spy Nebraska, another former home, another me in another time. No matter when I am or where I go, I am always halfway from home” (28). Halfway from Home takes the reader on a journey through memory and nostalgia. This nonlinear style starts in the opening sequences, beginning in San Miguel, California in 1991 where Montgomery, as her childhood self, digs with her favorite pail to find treasure in a magical backyard hole. Then four paragraphs later we are taken to Morro Bay, California, 1988 where she follows her father along the beach as he walks in the sand, struggling unsuccessfully to leave the same impression as his larger tracks. Almost immediately after, we are again transported to the year 1975, where her father shapes the land with his tools of labor. Just as fast, we are back to 1993, where Montgomery buried her dead frog, and her father could not understand why she was so emotional about it. The author provides the reader with several snapshots of memory from the years 1996, 2008, 2012, 2015, and so on.

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Review: Northern LIght: Power, Land, and The Memory of Water

4/1/2021

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Unearthing the Foundations of Home
Review: Northern Light: Power, Land, and The Memory of Water

Christina Cullen

Kazim Ali
Memoir
Milkweed Editions, pp. 200
Cost: $24.00 (hardback)

Author Kazim Ali reminds us that, like layers of sediment in the earth, generations of lives are inscribed within the land around us. In his memoir Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water, Ali weaves a detailed meshing of historical events, personal accounts, and his own experiences as he searches for answers to the series of questions that led him to Cross Lake and the Pimicikamak community.

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Review: Halfway from Home

Review: Northern LIght: Power, Land, and The Memory of Water

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