To Boldly Go

A summer of brilliant flowers and perfect weather. Girls dancing on a moonlit field. A cold house overgrown with abandoned gardens. These images come together in Anesa Miller's To Boldly Go, which explores the "turning years" of our new century from both a personal and a universal perspective. The author reveals the intimate pains of anger and loss at the death of her estranged father, but looks beyond emotional damages toward the wider horizon of environmental issues, runaway technology, and the implications of 9/11. This journey toward healing and hope traverses the landscape of memory with an eye for a better future. "These are provocative and eloquent essays, fierce meditations on our human capacities and frailties, the nature of memory, acts of forgiveness. Anesa Miller summons our better angels and makes firm reckonings with the devil, casting it away. A stunning collection." - Tiffany Midge, author of The Woman Who Married a Bear (Salt Publishing) and Outlaws, Renegades and Saints; Diary of a Mixed-up Halfbreed (Greenfield Review Press) "The world is blessed to have creative souls who write out of a need to make sense of what we experience when senseless things happen. Anesa is one of those people. ...These essays reflect the healing of a fine poetic mind. They explore the inner life of an exceptional artist, intertwined with the history of our times, the lives of her family and friends, some of whom brought her joy, some misery. ...Her moving thoughts come as a revelation..." - From the Foreword by Jaak Panksepp, author of The Archeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (W. W. Norton & Company)