TORREY HOUSE PRESS
NEW AND UPCOMING
BLOSSOM AS THE CLIFFROSE
edited by Karin Anderson and Danielle Dubrasky
Blossom as the Cliffrose features original poems and prose by talented writers who are faithful, non-faithful, believers, heretics, converts and de-converts, dragged in or forced out of the Mormon faith. This dynamic collection demonstrates the breadth, complexity, and diversity of a Latter-day Saint legacy of commitment to natural place and challenges us to examine the myriad ways our own deeply rooted heritage shapes our personal relationship with landscape.
JUNE 2021
QUIET DESPERATION, SAVAGE DELIGHT
by David Gessner
When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re-wilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.
JUNE 2021
DESERT CHROME:
Water, a Woman & Wild Horses in the West
by Kathryn Wilder
Kathryn Wilder’s personal story of grief, motherhood, and return to the desert entwines with the story of America's mustangs as Wilder makes a home on the Colorado Plateau, her property bordering a mustang herd. Desert Chrome illuminates these controversial creatures—their complex history in the Americas, their powerful presence on the landscape, and ways to help both horses and habitats stay wild in the arid West—and celebrates the animal nature in us all.
MAY 2021
STANDOFF
by Jacqueline Keeler
The Bundy takeover of Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe’s standoff against an oil pipeline in North Dakota are two sides of the same story that created America and its deep-rooted cultural conflicts. Through a compelling comparison of conflicting beliefs and legal systems, Keeler explores whether the West has really been won—and for whom.
APRIL 2021
SAGEBRUSH EMPIRE
by Jonathan P. Thompson
San Juan County, Utah, contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, rich in culture and history. But it’s also long been plagued with racism, bitterness, and politics as twisted as the canyons. Award-winning journalist Jonathan P. Thompson explores the redrock canyons and this corner of the western United States, which for five decades has been at the center of the American public lands wars.
AUGUST 2021
CANYONLANDS CARNAGE
by Scott Graham
When suspicious deaths befall a whitewater rafting expedition through Cataract Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, archaeologist Chuck Bender and his family recognize evil intent lies behind the tragedies. They must risk their lives and act before the murderer makes an already deadly journey on the Colorado River through Utah's red rock wilderness even deadlier—or turns on them instead.
SEPTEMBER 2021
DEAD SERIOUS
by Eli J. Knapp
Through personal stories of mishap and adventure, historical vignettes, and scenic detours, professor Eli J. Knapp dissects eighteen critical forces that lie behind the earth's sixth extinction. Drawing from experiences across the globe, Knapp peeks into odd and overlooked corners of natural history, showing how ocean-going tortoises and ghost deer can both instruct and inspire. Full of humor, hope, and self-effacing scientific savvy, Knapp's exploration of our home planet provides welcome respite in a deadly serious subject.
SEPTEMBER 2021
LET THE WILD GRASSES GROW
by Kase Johnstun
Let the Wild Grasses Grow chronicles the lives of Della Chavez and John Cordova, childhood friends separated by a tragic accident, who find each other again during World War II after leading lives of struggle through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and, for John, abuse at the hands of his grandfather. This sweeping American love story celebrates the power of home landscapes, family heritage, and first love.
OCTOBER 2021
NEW WORLD COMING
edited by Alastair Lee Bitsóí and Brooke Larsen
New World Coming documents this distinct moment in history through personal narratives and intergenerational imaginings of a just, healthy, and equitable future. Writers reflect on what movements for justice and liberation can learn from the response to COVID-19, uprisings for Black lives, and climate crisis, inspiring the change we need to survive and thrive. These powerful narratives cultivate and strengthen our imaginations for a regenerative future.
NOVEMBER 2021
TRACING TIME
by Craig Childs
Craig Childs bears witness to rock art of the Colorado Plateau—bighorn sheep pecked behind boulders, tiny spirals in stone, human figures with upraised arms shifting with the desert light, each one a portal to the open mouth of time. With a spirit of generosity, humility, and love of the arid, intricate landscapes of the desert Southwest, Childs sets these ancient communications in context, inviting readers to look and listen deeply.
FEBRUARY 2022
FIRST AND WILDEST
edited by Elizabeth Hightower Allen
In the summer of 1922, Aldo Leopold traveled on horseback up into the headwaters of New Mexico's Gila River and proposed to his bosses at the Forest Service that 500,000 acres of that rough country be set aside as roadless wilderness. Thus was born America's first—the world's first—designated wilderness. A century later, writer-activists come together to celebrate this vast, rugged landscape, the Yellowstone of the Southwest.
MARCH 2022