Animal, Mineral, Radical: Essays on Wildlife, Family, and Food

From the acclaimed author of Theft: “A lyrical exploration of the timeless themes of nature, mortality, love, and family” in the American West (Kristen Iverson, author of Full Body Burden).
“Radical, before it meant a person who advocates strong political reform, meant getting to the root of things, the origin. It comes from the Latin radix, radicis, meaning radish, a root vegetable.” ―BK Loren
These meditative essays range in subject from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes to the irony of a neighbor’s claim that nature “has gone out of vogue”; from a mother’s slow deterioration from Parkinson’s disease to the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded the author’s depression by offering her a sense of her small place in our wild and worthwhile world.
Award-winning writer and naturalist BK Loren takes an empathetic and gentle approach to the intricacies of human relationships and the nature of consciousness. Fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, the beauty of tradition even when it’s destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast-paced materialistic world―through each of these subjects and more, Loren peels back the layers of her own life, revealing what it means to be a human being in these often inhumane times.