Refuge
In 1983, the Great Salt Lake began a record rise that drowned one of the most important migratory bird refuges in the American West, and in the same year Terry Tempest Williams's mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, the second generation of Mormon women in Williams's family to develop the disease after downwind exposure to Nevada nuclear tests. Refuge, subtitled An Unnatural History of Family and Place, braids the two floods together chapter by chapter. Each section is named for a bird, from whistling swans to snowy plovers, and tracks what rising water is doing to habitat alongside what cancer is doing to her mother. Published in 1991, Williams's memoir became a founding text of American ecological nonfiction, ending with the elegy now known as The Clan of One-Breasted Women.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Refuge
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
As the Great Salt Lake rises and floods the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams watches the marshes she loves go under, and walks her Mormon mother through ovarian cancer.
Multiple books share this title. The most commonly searched is Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams (1991), a memoir blending nature writing and family illness.
Yes. Refuge interweaves the rising waters of the Great Salt Lake with Williams's mother's terminal cancer. It is widely cited as a foundational nature memoir of the 1990s.
Refuge is 293 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Refuge takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Refuge is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
Refuge is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.