Virga & Bone: essays from dry places by Craig Childs

Writer and adventurer Craig Childs dwells upon desert icons—human, animal, and otherwise—in these contemplative and visceral essays.

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons—a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced.

Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

122 pages (October 2019)

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To find a discussion guide for this book in the NoveList Plus database, go to the Library's website, click on Novelist under "We Recommend" → "Book Services". Click on "Book Discussion Guides" in the right sidebar on NoveList's home page. Then, either enter the title in the Search box or search for the title alphabetically. (You will need your Salt Lake County Library card number to access this resource outside a county library.)

Virga & Bone at goodreads

Review from Publishers Weekly 

Author Website

Book Bites, Episode 8: Craig Childs (from City of Longmont, CO)

This title is available for download  as an eAudioBook. Learn more about downloadables from the library here.

Title Read-alikes: A Desert Harvest by Bruce Berger; Walking the High Desert: encounters with rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail by Ellen Waterston; Seasons: desert sketches by Ellen Meloy; The Nature of Desert Nature: meditations on the nature of deserts by Gary Paul Nabhan ; Deep Creek: finding hope in the high country by Pam Houston; In Earshot of Water: Notes from the Columbia Plateau by Paul J. Lindholdt; High Sierra: a love story by Kim Stanley Robinson; The Immeasurable World: journeys in desert places by William Atkins; Refuge: an unnatural history of family and place by Terry Tempest Williams; Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants by Robin Kimmerer; Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People by Elizabeth A. Fenn; Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram; and Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard.