Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

As a medical and radiation oncologist with nearly a quarter century of experience, as a man whose parents died of unusual malignancies, and as the parent of a child with cancer, grief is a part of the experience of life with which I am well acquainted. This book is probably the most honest and eloquent expression of grief and the struggle of an extraordinarily sensitive woman with spirituality and loss as I have ever read. It is not without its faults, but even these are very revealing about the way human beings deal with a world in which change and loss are inevitable.

Faults? There are only two that come to mind. One is the title. There is nothing in this book that is unnatural in any way. Loss and sorrow are as natural as any other human experience. The second is the trap so many of us fall into of searching for cause and effect, a way to assuage grief by assigning blame that becomes evident in the final chapter. However, Mrs. Williams can be forgiven for that. She has left us with an insightful and lyrical account of her mother's illness and the comfort the beauty of the natural world brought to a daughter left alone. This is one woman with a sensitive and honest heart who is not afraid to let the rest of us look inside. There is much to be learned from what Mrs. Williams has written and Refuge is highly recommended.

By the way, Terry, one of your mother's doctors, Gary Johnson, delivered my son who was fortunate enough to survive his own battle with cancer 18 years later. It was a pleasure to see his name mentioned. Gary was one man for whom I had a lot of respect when I was a senior medical student at the University of Utah in 1977. Thanks very much for writing this book. You have my apology on the part of my profession for the stupidly insensitive way your mom was treated on certain occasions. And you have my gratitude and respect as well. I wish I had known you and your family when I was growing up in SLC.

MS


I tried to like this book, but just couldn't -and here's why   September 23, 2003
Mark E. Baxter (Layton, UT United States)
26 out of 57 found this review helpful

Living in Utah, having a Master's Degree in Aquatic Ecology from BYU, being a physician, and LDS, I get given a copy of this book every year or so from someone who admires this book. Having read this book several times (There are well-written and interesting parts), I usually then ask them what they think about some aspect of the book like the anti-male stance of the author. Most people look puzzled and then admit they have never really read the book, they just heard from someone else that it was really good.

Since this book deals with Utah, aquatic ecology, medicine, and Mormonism and most of the reviewers of this book gloss over the nuts and bolts of this book, I thought I would share my impressions of this book since I have some expertise in all these areas.

First of all, it really isn't that interesting. It took me several aborted attempts before I actually finished the thing and I love reading. Yes, portions of it are good prose, but I would usually finish 10 pages or so and be unable to say what exactly it was that I had just read. The writing reminds me of Annie Dillard - confusing and over-rated in general. There are other writers who have joined personal and family travails with nature much better. Read Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It" after reading "Refuge" and you will see that there is really no comparison; Maclean is so obviously superior that you wonder why anyone ever told you "Refuge" was that good.

Williams attempts to tie together her mother's and grandmother's breast cancer possibly caused by radiation exposure to 1950's nuclear tests to the flooding of a bird refuge in the 1980's. She really doesn't do this that well and this lack of similarity makes the whole book choppy at best and disjointed and irrelevant at worst. Throwing in a little tiresome male-bashing, church-bashing, and anyone-that-doesn't-think-like-me-bashing really grates on the reader after a while and you finish the book feeling like you need to take a long shower to remove the grime from your mind.

That said, the strength of this book is the account of how the female family members cope with breast cancer that runs through the generations. This is also the weakness of the book because the author has such a glaring lack of insight of the male members of the family and their feelings. Yes, Ms. Williams, men have feelings too!

The last portions of this book are laughable with some mystical feminist eco-worshippers sneaking onto some government test range. Apparently because these women chant and sway and have uteri, there is some mystical significance to this act of pointless civil disobedience. Well anyway, I don't recommend reading this book for anything other than the accounts of breast cancer coping. The anti-Utah, anti-Male, anti-Mormon aspects, and the real lack of anything meaningful regarding ecology makes this book not worth the effort, in my opinion.


Powerful, intimate, important storytelling   August 2, 2000
15 out of 17 found this review helpful

An intimate telling of family and loss, courage and humor, honest confrontations with mortality, a deeply spiritual tone, and chapter titles introducing us to over thirty different birds, this beautifully descriptive and authentic tale leaves us with tears and a search for binoculars and a bird guidebook. Terry Tempest Williams weaves with great detail the heart breaking and life affirming events of the simultaneous devastation of her mother's body and the migratory bird sanctuary that has been her refuge. She skillfully keeps from dramatizing this innately powerful story. Williams had me deeply attached to pages I knew would be increasingly painful to read. Yet, as it became more painful, I would never describe it as depressing. I am struck by the powerful way she honors her mother, their family's reverent yet human journey through a particularly virulent cancer, and the ultimate power of nature, and equally important, humanity's thoughtless interference with nature, to turn one's life into a personal desert that used to be called home. She is a master storyteller and a poweful activist. This must read challenges the reader to enter a world where solutions are not simple, and life is exposed at its most vulnerable while courage and passion abound.


Honest and unique   September 29, 2000
K. Parsons (Idyllwild, CA USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

Rarely has the inner landscape of a person's soul been so honestly described in print. Terry Tempest Williams presents us with an intensely personal look at herself and still manages to remain the private person behind the book. This is no small feat... and the writing in "Refuge" is up to the task. This is very lyrical writing and could easily remind us of an older tradition of verbal story-telling and the passing on of history from generation to generation. Williams has a recurring theme in her work: that of being connected with and living fully in the physical earth surrounding her. "Refuge" illustrates this connection beautifully as the flooding of Great Salt Lake parallels her own journey through death in her family, her realization that these deaths were not innocent and, finally, her acceptance that she herself is looking down the barrel of a gun. Very haunting, sad in places and yet full of life, "Refuge" is a very unique way of looking at some of life's most demanding challenges. I sincerely hope that the author is able to avoid that fate which she leaves us thinking about at the end of the book and I applaud her decision to be so brave and honest with her writing. "Desert Quartet" by the same author is an absolutely priceless little book, and "Refuge" is the second book by this author I have read. I look forward to more releases from this dynamic and very relevant author.