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Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land

Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land
By Amy Irvine

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Product Description

Trespass is the story of one woman’s struggle to gain footing in inhospitable territory. A wilderness activist and apostate Mormon, Amy Irvine sought respite in the desert outback of southern Utah’s red-rock country after her father’s suicide, only to find out just how much of an interloper she was among her own people. But more than simply an exploration of personal loss, Trespass is an elegy for a dying world, for the ruin of one of our most beloved and unique desert landscapes and for our vanishing connection to it. Fearing what her father’s fate might somehow portend for her, Irvine retreated into the remote recesses of the Colorado Plateau—home not only to the world’s most renowned national parks but also to a rugged brand of cowboy Mormonism that stands in defiant contrast to the world at large. Her story is one of ruin and restoration, of learning to live among people who fear the wilderness the way they fear the devil and how that fear fuels an antagonism toward environmental concerns that pervades the region. At the same time, Irvine mourns her own loss of wildness and disconnection from spirituality, while ultimately discovering that the provinces of nature and faith are not as distinct as she once might have believed.
 

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #737101 in Books
  • Published on: 2008-02-19
  • Released on: 2008-02-19
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 384 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In this clouded memoir, Irvine, former development director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA), pursues her tortuous trajectory from a loosely Mormon upbringing to strident environmental activism. Irvine writes from the fresh grief of her father's suicide: a fierce atheist with a Mormon pedigree, her father divorced her mother when Irvine was 10, drank heavily and gradually grew estranged from his family before shooting himself in the heart. With her mother and sister, Irvine grew up a Jack Mormon (one whose belief in the Church of the Latter Day Saints has lapsed), endured a brief marriage with a yuppie vegetarian and found true love with a lawyer named Herb, with whom she moved to San Juan County, Utah. As Irvine, a grant-proposal writer, and Herb both worked for the SUWA, their advocacy for public lands pitted them in uncomfortable opposition to the pro-development, cattle-friendly interests of their largely Mormon neighbors. Irvine structures her memoir cannily around the four eras of local Native American prehistoric culture (Lithic, Archaic, Basketmaker and Pueblo), each reflecting a period of migration and settlement in her own life. However, her work is filled with so much tertiary detail that emotional resonance is rare. Still, her views on wilderness preservation ring passionately and her research is sound. (Feb.)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* The Mormon ranchers of Utah’s red-rock country hate environmentalists as much as coyotes, and believe women belong at home with their children. As a wilderness advocate and renegade Mormon, Irvine is, therefore, apprehensive about living in contested San Juan County with her ardent public-lands-use attorney lover. As she hikes breathtakingly beautiful, ruins-studded canyons, she vividly imagines the lives of the long-vanished hunter-gatherers and contrasts their ways of being with ours. Bold and original in her thinking, candid and lyrical in expression, Irvine launches a penetrating critique of Mormon sovereignty, the persistent oppression of women, the longing to belong versus the need to be one’s self, and the environmental havoc wrought by cattle ranching, “extreme recreationists,” and the federally sanctioned, post-9/11 rush to extract fossil fuels from protected public lands. Haunted by her complicated heritage as a descendant of one of the original Mormon Saints as well as nonconformists––especially her grandmother Ada, an artist who found meaning in the desert’s mercurial beauty, and her father, who lived to hunt and died at his own hands––Irvine suspensefully chronicles the rancor and stress of advocacy work and a bewildering health crisis. Forthright and imaginative, sensitive and tough, Irvine joins red-rock heroes Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams in breaking ranks and speaking up for the living world. --Donna Seaman

Review
"As raw and stinging as a fresh burn . . . It's hard to imagine a personal history more transporting than this one, with its rigorously original prose (not a single cliche in 300-plus pages), emotional detail and bibliophilic departures into the musty caverns of American history." -- Los Angeles Times

"Bold and original in her thinking, candid and lyrical in expression, Irvine launches a penetrating critique of Mormon sovereignty, the persistent oppression of women, the longing to belong versus the need to be one's self, and the environmental havoc wrought by cattle ranching, "extreme recreationists," and the federally sanctioned, post-9/11 rush to extract fossil fuels from protected public lands . . . Forthright and imaginative, sensitive and tough, Irvine joins red-rock heroes Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams in breaking ranks and speaking up for the living world." -- Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review

"Irvine braids together threads of Mormon history, her own family's stories and her quest for illumination, creating a singularly elegaic and astringent memoir of dissent." -- Chicago Tribune

"Irvine's language is lovely, her stories compelling." -- Mother Jones online

"Nestled amid the descriptions of the stark, red-rock desert of the Colorado Plateau, speculation about ancient inhabitants, and reflection on Mormon migration west is Irvine's own story, which she unfolds gradually while moving seamlessly between past and present . . . beautifully written." -- Library Journal

Customer Reviews

lyrical insights on the way to wisdom5
This is an eloquent, lyrical, and insightful account from the frontlines of the struggle to redefine our relationsips to Western landscapes. With a foot in both the Mormon ranching world of her ancestors and the world of conservation activism she has adopted, Amy Irvine struggles to reconcile her divided heart and loyalties. Although the struggles described are contemporary, this is really an old tale made fresh. The great writer Wallace Stegner said that the history of the American West is the struggle between "boomers" and "stickers." Boomers are those who came to make a quick killing and end up on easy street - the conquistadors, gold miners, land scalpers, and good ol' boy developers. Stickers, or "nesters," are those who try to understand the limits and needs of the land and live within them. But the division is too simple. In our consumer culture we all exhibit the behaviors of boomers and yet we all want to feel we are at home and in good relationship. This difficult struggle to sort out the conflicts and find balance is central to Amy's account. Ultimately, this is a quest for wisdom told with courage and compassion.

Edgy and sophisticated5
I couldn't put it down. Irvine's writing is real and eloquent. She masterfully blends history, community and raw emotion into a riveting tale of life in a small, southern Utah town.
Trespass is sure to become a modern western classic.

A Fantastic Memoir5
Ms. Irvine's book speaks to the soul. It carries a message of loss and hope, of death and life, and of the virtues of solitude and togetherness. Her portrait of her mate, Herb, the so-called "Lion Man" who embodies the wildness of the red rock desert she loves, is particularly intriguing. Highly recommended.