Brief and beautifully intense personal essays explore hope, pleasure, and creativity --offering a crucial balance to David Oates' dramatically personal account of what it has been like to be a "citizen of the regime" during eight years of unprecedented propaganda, torture, waste, and war. What is the right response, when the government that belongs to us goes seriously off course? How does a person's private and creative life relate to the life we share in common?
This book is about keeping faith and experiencing darkness. The author finds wildness and grace breaking out in unexpected places - from city streets to mountain peaks, from ecstatic pleasures to unanswerable questions. Readable, memorable, smart but straight from the heart - these essays give voice to our shared experience of a dark and frustrating time in the nation's life. They should find a wide audience.