Published in 2018
240 pages
Ana Maria Spagna is the author of nine books including Pushed: Miners, a Merchant and (Maybe) a Massacre., Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going and the poetry chapbook, Mile Marker Six, as well as The Luckiest Scar on Earth, a novel about Charlotte, a 14-year old snowboarder. Previous books include Reclaimers, stories of indigenous people reclaiming sacred land and water, the memoir/history Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, and two previous collections of essays, Potluck, finalist for the Washington State Book Award, and Now Go Home, a Seattle Times Best Book of 2004.
What is this book about?
For many years, Ana Maria Spagna has stayed put, mostly, in a small mountain valley at the head of a glacier-carved lake. You’re so lucky to live there, people say. She is lucky. But she is also restless. In Uplake she takes road trips, flies to distant cities, fantasizes about other people’s lives, and then returns home again to muse on rootedness, yearning, commitment, ambition, wonder, and love. These engaging, reflective essays celebrate the richness of it winter floods and summer fires, the roar of a chainsaw and a fiddle in the wilderness, long hikes and open-water swims, an injured bear, a lost wedding ring, and a tree in the middle of a river. Uplake reminds us to love what we have while encouraging us to still imagine what we want.
