In Our Nature

From her brilliant opening essay through her anthology of 14 incredible stories, Donna Seaman has given us a breakthrough book that places theoretical "environmental issues" in a wider context than ever before. Through stories about bats and geese, weeds and trees, mothers and lovers, fathers, sons and very mean kids, from well knowns and lesser knowns, Seaman shows us that nature isn't only "out there", but in here, that what becomes of it also becomes of us. She locates wildness as the common thread in these diverse treasures, thereby joining us immutably to the natural world, showing us that to be isolated from it is to be isolated from one another and from ourselves. In a way, this book is a call to recast the politics of preserving the natural world by better locating, rather than bemoaning, our place in it.

Nature writing has been the bastion of non-fiction. Now, Donna Seaman has introduced readers to a new concept -- nature writing in fiction. In these stories, fiction writers reveal nature's influence on who we are. At the same time, they illustrate how we alter nature and, ultimately, ourselves. After reading the collection, the reader has the sense that there are no boundaries. Seaman has a keen eye for the great story.