Bøger af Deborah Larsen

After years of living in the Northeastern United States, Sophie Nordlund strikes out on her own for the wild Southwest-a "Land Apart." Fragile from a break with old roles, she resolves to write a mystery as well as to maintain an independent spirit in the mountainous desert. In dreams Sophie conjures ancient sites, Paleolithic people, and fluted spear-points. In daily living she encounters eccentric neighbors, the specter of death, rattlesnakes, loneliness, elegant Tucson institutions, and the stunning diversity of the borderlands dwellers with whom she hopes to build community. Crises of faith have followed her throughout life. As the narrative moves forward, Sophie opens herself to the brutal yet beautiful Sonoran landscape and to an improbable love affair with Charles Darwin and his dog. She discovers certain sacred spaces and then her own path. The narrative ends just before the Tucson shootings. In this work the author crosses nonfiction and fiction; however, it is essentially a work of the imagination.

Stitching Porcelain, Deborah Larsen's first book of poetry, is a narrative-lyric sequence based on the life of Matteo Ricci, the resourceful Jesuit who entered China in 1583 and stayed for a quarter century. Pondering cultural accommodation as well as faith, many of the poems center on actual events: Ricci's dressing as a Buddhist; his awe-inspiring map (with China shrewdly centered); his prostration before an empty Dragon Throne. Other events the poet imagined. (In the title room, Ricci addresses a love lyric to China: "Your porcelain is so fine, so thin,/a brass wire can repair it . . . /Once I saw you beneath the bamboo/ . . . bent back/from the world, stitching porcelain.") With a felicity rare in a debut volume, Larsen's opalescent poetry works in perfect counterpoint to the strange and brilliant Ricci.