Description

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Award-winning writer Luanne Armstrong returns to her first love, the land, and delivers a nourishing blend of self-reflection, nature-inspired philosophy, and social critique.

Going to Ground is a deeply intimate and meditative collection of personal essays exploring the intersections of chronic pain, the myths and stories that make us human, and the unexpected magic of finding your rage and joy reflected back to you by nature. Through these brave and vulnerable vignettes brimming with a lifetime’s worth of wisdom and filled with astonishing prose, Luanne Armstrong gets deeply personal about what it means to recover from traumatic brain injuries, grow older when you’ve fallen in love with being needed, and slow down enough to listen to nature, even when the message isn’t what you were expecting to hear. In this mix of self-reflection, nature-inspired philosophy, and social critique, Armstrong helps us make sense of the complicated relationships between aging parents and their adult children, the changes brought about by climate change and technology, and the slow, surprising process of getting older when you belong to the generation that lived by the motto, “Never trust anyone over 30.”

About the Author

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Luanne Armstrong holds a Ph.D in Education and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She has written twenty-five books including novels, children's books, memoir and books of essays, as well as poetry. She has won or been nominated for many awards, including the Chocolate Lily Award, the BC Hubert Evans Award, the Moonbeam Award, the Red Cedar Award, Surrey Schools Book of the Year Award, the Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Award, and the Silver Birch Award. Armstrong lives on Ktunaxa ?amak'is, “The People's Land."

Praise For…

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For A Bright and Steady Flame:

“From the Kootenays to the coast and back again, from poverty and single parenthood to writing and activism, love and pain, A Bright and Steady Flame is a love letter to a fifty-five year friendship and a memoir that offers extraordinary insights into aging, love, loss and joy.” — Jane Hamilton Silcott, co-editor of Love Me True and Everything Rustles
 

“In A Bright and Steady Flame, we have been given a gift that is at once an easy read and a work of depth, intellect, compassion and razor-sharp observation. It is a book that makes me want to go into my library and re-read some of Armstrong’s earlier works, if for no other reason than the quality of writing…” —Lorne Eckersley, Creston Valley Advance

 

“This book may well change your worldview about aging. It will certainly encourage you to live as creatively as you can, particularly as you grow older. It is a book about navigating personal annihilation, about being ground into ashes and almost disappearing from life, only to return to the world with a poetic and riveting story that will light a fire in readers’ hearts.” —Lee Reid, M. Ed, The Ormsby Review