Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction)

Long, Priscilla

ISBN 10: 0820350443 / ISBN 13: 9780820350448

Published by University of Georgia Press (edition ), 2016

About this Item

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Seller Inventory # 0820350443-7-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fire and Stone: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Crux: The Georgia Series in Literary Nonfiction)
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press (edition )
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820350443
• ISBN 13: 9780820350448
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

The questions that drive Priscilla Long’s Fire and Stone are the questions asked by the painter Paul Gauguin in the title of his 1897 painting: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? These questions look beyond everyday trivialities to ponder the essence of our origins.

Using her own story as a touchstone, Long explores our human roots and how they shape who we are today. Her personal history encompasses childhood as an identical twin on a dairy farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland; the turmoil, social change, and music of the 1960s; the suicide of a sister; and a life in art in the Pacific Northwest. Here, memoir extends the threads of the writer’s individual and very personal life to science, to history, and to ancestors, both literary and genetic, back to the Neanderthals.

Long uses profoundly poetic personal essays to draw larger connections and to ask compelling questions about identity. Framed by four distinctive sections, Fire and Stone transcends genre and evolves into a sweeping elegy on what it means to be human.

About the Author

PRISCILLA LONG is a Seattle-based writer, writing teacher, and editor. She is the author of Crossing Over: Poems, The Writer’s Portable Mentor: A Guide to Art, Craft, and the Writing Life, and Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America’s Bloody Coal Industry.