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Half-Light

Half-Light

Westbound on a Hot Planet

by Amy Kaler

Published by: University of Alberta Press

Series: Series: Wayfarer

248 Pages, 6" x 9"

Currency selected: Flag for CAD

CAD (Default)

Paperback
9781772127409
Publication date: May 30, 2024

PDF
9781772127614
Publication date: August 22, 2024

EPUB, Reflowable
9781772127607
Publication date: August 22, 2024

Description
Authors
Contents
Praise

Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to “go west,” Amy Kaler offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. She explores “ruins” of the human history of the North American settler west—faded hamlets, bunkers, fields of cars, bends in the river—that serve as emblems of hope, generational commitment abandoned by contemporary heirs, faith, hubris, even carelessness. These stops are intertwined with reflections on aging, temporality, and change, making the book feel like a deeply satisfying road trip with a thoughtful friend. Moving from meditative to ardent to sobering in compelling and measured ways, Half-Light shimmers with urgency and suggestion.

Amy Kaler is an Edmonton-based writer and Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta. She has lived in Edmonton, Treaty 6 territory since 2000. She is the author of Until Further Notice: A Year in Pandemic Time, a collection of essays published in 2022. She is also the author of three previous books. Kaler won the Cecile E. Mactaggart Travel Prize for Narrative Writing in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award for Personal Essays in 2021 and longlisted in 2022. Her nonacademic work appears in The New Quarterly, Queens Quarterly, and Spadina Literary Review.

Prologue

Central Alberta, Somewhere Near Rumsey

Westbound

Retlaw

On Fire for the Rest of My Life

Rossdale Flats and the Bomb Shelter

The West and Its Ruins

Swan Hills

Westbound All Along

Campus Saint-Jean

The End of the World and the Ends of the Earth

Dalum

Orphans

St. Paul

My Seventies

Strathcona Science Park

The Years Before Me, the Years Behind

Newbrook

Ancestors and Descendants

Wostok and Spaca Moskalyk

Home for the Time Being

Packingtown

The Most Important Things Have Already Happened

Holy Transfiguration

Standing Pose

Rowley

“Your Cell Will Teach You”

Newcastle Mine

Time Management

Abbotsford

Keeping Time

Rochfort Bridge

Pigeons

Palliser Triangle

Who Is That?

Bunchberry Meadows

Top Ten Crises

Beaverhill Lake

Epilogue: Eastbound

Acknowledgements

References

Listed in "Most Anticipated: Our 2024 Nonfiction Spring Preview" by 49th Shelf, February 7, 2024

"Amy Kaler is smart and thoughtful and well read, all of which make her a wonderful conversationalist. Above all, Half-Light feels like a deeply satisfying conversation. And great company for the end of the world." Angie Abdou, author of This One Wild Life

"Amy Kaler invites the reader to join her on an exploration of aging in a landscape dense with history of occupation and use. She asks us to pay attention to what has already happened to small communities, to dreams and hopes, in order to prepare ourselves for an uncertain future." Theresa Kishkan, author of Blue Portugal and Other Essays

# 1 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, July 14, 2024

# 6 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, July 21, 2024

"Being able to connect to an author and a location so deeply made the reading experience magical for me. I truly don’t often feel myself in books. But this was one where I was thrilled to feel myself between the pages." Leah Horton, on Instagram

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