Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest

By Sharman Apt Russell

Book Overview

Filled with "honest" writing and "wise" observations, "Russell's well-written essays describe her life as an urban immigrant to the rural Southwest" (Library Journal).

In 1981, newlywed Sharman Apt Russell moved with her husband to an agricultural valley in southwestern New Mexico, hoping to create a simpler life. From building their adobe house to the home-birth of their firstborn to growing their own food and navigating the seasonal flooding of the Mimbres River, these luminous essays chart Sharman's journey toward self-sufficiency in a land as mythical and remote as the image of the prehistoric fluteplayer found on the pottery in trading posts throughout the Southwest.

Replete with wisdom and a reverence for the Native American people whose relics Sharman discovers everywhere on the land around her, this award-winning memoir pays tribute to the power and grace of nature, our deep connection to our prehistoric past, and the beauty of living in communion with the land.

"A fine contribution to the literature of the modern American Southwest . . . [Russell] achieves just the right mix of fact and metaphor, humor and poetics." -Booklist

"These essays say much about the difficulty of maintaining an alternate lifestyle." -Publishers Weekly

"A lovely little book. To be kept and read and read again." -Tony Hillerman, bestselling author

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1504079353
• ISBN13: 9781504079358
• Release Date: December 2022
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
• Length: 146 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Moving collection of essays about author's life in the SW.

In this lovely collection of essays, the author, Russell, explores the relationship between the American search for mythological Home to the landscape, the community and the self. In her title essay, she writes about memories of her father, a former test pilot in the Air Force, who died while setting a new speed record in the X-2 over another desert in California, when Russell was still a child. Her memories of him are recovered through her exploration of the image of the Kokopelli man, part of the mythological landscape of the Southwest that she struggles to identify with in this search for Home. In the other essays, Russell tries to balance her utopian ideal of a quiet, slow-paced life in a small rural community with the reality of the isolation and financial struggle of raising a family and building a home in the harsh, though stunningly beautiful, landscape of the Southwest desert, along with the politics and problems that arise in their eccentric and somewhat transitory community. Russell writes to understand, to make meaning--and the writing seems to discover itself over and over, allowing the reader a fresh journey, no matter the number of readings. Beautiful language