Follows a baby calf gray whale and its mother on their long, four-month migration from Mexico to Alaska in search of food. Includes a brief biography of Nancy Simmons, curator of the Department of Mammology at the American Museum of Natural History.

"In February 2004, when her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Tracy Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. An Alaskan alone-and lonely-in Japan, she begins to pay attention. My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making...

Shares highly informed meditations into how the author's childhood in Anchorage, her literary career, and the lives of beloved family members have been impacted by hereditary schizophrenia. The debut of an important new literary voice: Marin Sardy's extraordinarily affecting, fiercely intelligent memoir unflinchingly traces the path of the schizophrenia that runs in her family. Against the starkly beautiful backdrop of Anchorage, Alaska, where the...