The Deepest Roots: Finding Food and Community on a Pacific Northwest Island

As friends began "going back to the land" at the same time that a health issue emerged, Kathleen Alcalá set out to reexamine her relationship with food at the most local level. Remembering her parents, Mexican immigrants who grew up during the Depression, and the memory of planting, growing, and harvesting fresh food with them as a child, she decided to explore the history of the Pacific Northwest island she calls home.

In The Deepest Roots, Alcalá walks, wades, picks, pokes, digs, cooks, a...