April 1, 2019
Roberts (writing, California Coll. of the Arts; The Entire Earth and Sky) details the natural and social history of the Presidio of San Francisco; once a military outpost, now a national park. The author interweaves historical anecdotes with her decade-long observations of changing landscapes: plants, animals, and people. She also features notebook entries written throughout her life as a student, artist, teacher, journalist, and mother. Roberts explores territory as close as the local high-priced grocery store and as remote as Antarctica. When she sits in Henry David Thoreau's cabin in Walden Pond or describes how California botanist Alice Eastwood once led British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace on a hike in the Rockies, she puts artists, writers, and scientists in conversation with one another and herself. VERDICT Roberts expertly crafts a narrative both of the places she's traveled and the events that have shaped her own emotional terrain. Her thoughtful wanderings will appeal to fans of Helen MacDonald's H Is for Hawk, Peter Wohlleben's Hidden Life of Trees, and Hope Jahren's Lab Girl.--Catherine Lantz, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.
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