In her latest book, Finding Beauty in Broken World, Terry Tempest Williams applies a poet’s sensibility and an unadorned syntax to juxtapose a pair of unlikely subjects: genocide in Rwanda and prairie dogs. Admittedly, that’s an unconventional combination. So is the style - a series of broken narrative and impressionistic paragraphs, braided with reflective comments, a trip to Italy for a class on mosaic construction and stories from her family’s pipeline business. This episodic structure, often found in lyric essays, eliminates the traditional narrative arc; the art arises from the arrangement. No wonder this book took eight years. Although Williams periodically supplies her take, she mostly observes and invites the reader to witness. What keeps the reader engaged is the tender and honest tone. more ›