Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land

by N. Scott Momaday Narrated by N. Scott Momaday

Overview

""Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose."" - Esquire

A magnificent testament to the earth, from Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and poet N. Scott Momaday.

One of the most distinguished voices in American letters, N. Scott Momaday has devoted much of his life to celebrating and preserving Native American culture, especially its oral tradition. A member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday was born in Lawton, Oklahoma and grew up on Navajo, Apache, and Peublo reservations throughout the Southwest. It is a part of the earth he knows well and loves deeply.

In Earth Keeper, he reflects on his native ground and its influence on his people. “When I think about my life and the lives of my ancestors,"" he writes, ""I am inevitably led to the conviction that I, and they, belong to the American land. This is a declaration of belonging. And it is an offering to the earth.”

In this wise and wonderous work, Momaday shares stories and memories throughout his life, stories that have been passed down through generations, stories that reveal a profound spiritual connection to the American landscape and reverence for the natural world. He offers an homage and a warning. He shows us that the earth is a sacred place of wonder and beauty, a source of strength and healing that must be honored and protected before it's too late. As he so eloquently and simply reminds us, we must all be keepers of the earth.

Editorial Reviews

New York Times

A timely meditation on the natural world — as well as what we stand to lose as the climate changes.”

AudioFile

N. Scott Momaday’s deep, distinctive voice draws listeners into his reflections on a remembered Earth…Listeners will be enthralled as they share his personal quest and his vision of the American West.”

Robert Redford

Poets and storytellers have always reminded us of our spiritual connections to the land and the world around us…Momaday skillfully continues this tradition in Earth Keeper.”

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Essays as multilayered and majestic as the landscape that has been present in everything that Momaday has written.”

Publishers Weekly

Using lyrical, heartfelt language, [Momaday] looks back on a life lived close to nature, and on the joy that natural wonders have given him…Readers will find Momaday’s words refreshing and comforting.”

Esquire

In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance.”

From the Publisher

Poets and storytellers have always reminded us of our spiritual connections to the land and the world around us—passed along through dreams, stories, memories, and mythologies. Scott Momaday skillfully continues this tradition in Earth Keeper, from which we can all learn and benefit.” — Robert Redford

“Earth Keeper is a prayer for continuity in these days of uncertainty. I cannot tell you why I loved this book, I can only tell you I wept my way through it. Each page brought me closer to myself, a self I had lost in the pandemic. We need Scott Momaday's calm, clear prose and stories. Words are medicine. There is wisdom in sharing what one knows, especially at a time when we know so little. ‘Let me say my heart,’ he says.  And he does.” — Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing

"Dazzling. . . . In glittering prose, Momaday recalls stories passed down through generations, illuminating the earth as a sacrosanct place of wonder and abundance. At once a celebration and a warning, Earth Keeper is an impassioned defense of all that our endangered planet stands to lose." — Esquire

"A timely meditation on the natural world — as well as what we stand to lose as the climate changes." — New York Times

“Wonder abounds in these pages. . . . Short chapters of prose that read almost like prayers to the natural world.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Short but satisfying. . . . Using lyrical, heartfelt language, [Momaday] looks back on a life lived close to nature, and on the joy that natural wonders have given him. . . . At a time when bad news is in plentiful supply, readers will find Momaday’s words refreshing and comforting in their sincerity.” — Publishers Weekly

"A profound reflection on humanity's relationship with its terrestrial home, the planet Earth." — Booklist

“A collection of short essays as multilayered and majestic as the landscape that has been present in everything that Momaday has written. . . . [A] poetic love letter to the Earth.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Part memory and part meditation, part poem and part prayer, Earth Keeper is a short but powerful collection that holds its arms out to the world, asking to be read again and again. "I make a prayer for words," writes Momaday. "Let me say my heart." That heart is evident on every page of Earth Keeper, a reminder that body, soul and earth are inextricably woven together, and to deny that connection is to deny one's very humanity." — Shelf Awareness (starred review)

"Earth Keeper is a celebration of the rich spiritual imagination of America’s Native peoples. . . . Momaday, now 86 years old, must be ranked among the greatest of our contemporary writers and our environmental prophets." — American Scholar

"Equal parts memoir, folklore, and poetry, Earth Keeper is above all a work of great reverence, an appreciation for the earth and the relationship we cultivate with it." — Commonweal

"In many ways, to read Momaday is to read the land. It is to encounter the earth alive with wind and sunlight, with plants and animals, and to know all of it—each aspect of the world—by name. It is also to renew a reverence for beauty and a feeling of hope." — Stanford Magazine

Terry Tempest Williams

“Earth Keeper is a prayer for continuity in these days of uncertainty. I cannot tell you why I loved this book, I can only tell you I wept my way through it. Each page brought me closer to myself, a self I had lost in the pandemic. We need Scott Momaday's calm, clear prose and stories. Words are medicine. There is wisdom in sharing what one knows, especially at a time when we know so little. ‘Let me say my heart,’ he says.  And he does.

Booklist

"A profound reflection on humanity's relationship with its terrestrial home, the planet Earth."

Shelf Awareness (starred review)

"Part memory and part meditation, part poem and part prayer, Earth Keeper is a short but powerful collection that holds its arms out to the world, asking to be read again and again. "I make a prayer for words," writes Momaday. "Let me say my heart." That heart is evident on every page of Earth Keeper, a reminder that body, soul and earth are inextricably woven together, and to deny that connection is to deny one's very humanity."

American Scholar

"Earth Keeper is a celebration of the rich spiritual imagination of America’s Native peoples. . . . Momaday, now 86 years old, must be ranked among the greatest of our contemporary writers and our environmental prophets."

Booklist

"A profound reflection on humanity's relationship with its terrestrial home, the planet Earth."

Commonweal

"Equal parts memoir, folklore, and poetry, Earth Keeper is above all a work of great reverence, an appreciation for the earth and the relationship we cultivate with it."

Kirkus Reviews

2020-09-01
A plea for the planet from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, poet, and playwright.

Born and raised as a member of the Kiowa tribe, Momaday (b. 1934) has had a remarkably distinguished career, earning a National Medal of Arts and a lifetime achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, among other honors. Here, the author follows the dictum of one of his own teachers: “Write little and write well.” Momaday distills age-old wisdom from the elders who came before him into a concise book featuring chapters no more than a paragraph in length. He evokes a world of natural connection, one that existed long before him and is now threatened, and he draws inspiration from Dragonfly, “a holy man” devoted to “a spiritual life of the mind.” Throughout the book, Momaday maintains a tension between the eternal spirit of the Earth, with the “Great Mystery” pervading it, and the threats posed by those infected with “the immorality of ignorance and greed, the disease of indifference to the earth.” While he notes the importance of studying history, he also argues that “it is the present and the possibilities of a future that must concern us. Ours is a damaged world. We humans have done the damage, and we must be held to account. We have suffered a poverty of the imagination, a loss of innocence. I would strive with all my strength to give [a] sense of wonder to those who will come after me.” Wonder abounds in these pages, and the author also touches on the passage of time and the many costs of supposed progress. Though brief, the book serves as a tight summation of many of the themes that Momaday has developed during his long career, and his fans will relish it.

Short chapters of prose that read almost like prayers to the natural world.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177868837
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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