By
Sixtysomething southwestern writer Sojourner, a commentator on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and an environmental activist, explores the conundrums of women’s lives in a set of autobiographical essays. Solace forms a mosaic memoir. Inspired by the high desert, Sojourner’s prose is at once spare and evocative as she remembers how her childhood was seared by her mother’s depression and redeemed, in part, by her discovery of the “shelter” books provide. A self-described “good bad girl,” Sojourner taps into the source of her zeal for hard work and right action and her passion for the wrong men. Married, divorced, and the mother of four early on, she remembers the misery of women’s lives prior to the women’s movement. Possessed of a fiercely addictive personality, she recounts with humor and wisdom her struggles to steer clear of alcohol, gambling, and even the Internet, ultimately transcending the personal to illuminate the woes of our entire consumer culture. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Mary Sojourner is a prize-winning short story and essay writer. She is also the author of the novel Sisters of the Dream, about an East Coast woman who moves to Arizona and begins to dream the life of an ancient Pueblo woman. She teaches writing in Flagstaff, Arizona, where she lives in a two-room cabin with no running water, a wood stove, a fax machine and a passel of cats.
