The Earth and love of land

Explore a curated list of books celebrating the Earth, the love of land, and our deep connection to nature. Discover inspiring reads on environmental passion and stewardship.

Prodigal Summer Cover
Book

Prodigal Summer

by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver's fifth novel is a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. It weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.
The Earth Cover
Book

The Earth

by Émile Zola

When Jean Macquart arrives in the peasant community of Beauce, where farmers have worked the same land for generations, he finds himself involved in the corrupt affairs of the local Fouan family. But, in a community where land is everything, sibling rivalry quickly turns to brutal hatred, as Buteau declares himself unsatisfied with his lot.
Into the Forest Cover
Book

Into the Forest

by Jean Hegland

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home. Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other. Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America. Praise for Into the Forest “[A] beautifully written and often profoundly moving novel.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A work of extraordinary power, insight and lyricism, Into the Forest is both an urgent warning and a passionate celebration of life and love.”—Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade “From the first page, the sense of crisis and the lucid, honest voice of the . . . narrator pull the reader in. . . . A truly admirable addition to a genre defined by the very high standards of George Orwell's 1984.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Beautifully written.”—Kirkus Reviews “This beautifully written story captures the essential nature of the sister bond: the fierce struggle to be true to one’s own self, only to learn that true strength comes from what they are able to share together.”—Carol Saline, co-author of Sisters “Jean Hegland’s sense of character is firm, warm, and wise. . . . [A] fine first novel.”—John Keeble, author of Yellowfish
Giants in the Earth Cover
Book

Giants in the Earth

by Ole Edvart Rolvaag

The classic story of a Norwegian pioneer family's struggles with the land and the elements of the Dakota Territory as they try to make a new life in America.
Item Not Found
ID: 0002243865
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0694524360
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0871565099
(Type: books)
Gardens in the Dunes Cover
Book

Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

Indigo, an Indian girl from Arizona orphaned by U.S. Cavalry, is adopted by an intellectual white woman who takes her on a tour of Europe. A look at Western civilization through Indigo's eyes.
Item Not Found
ID: 1859844057
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0380754770
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0156028794
(Type: books)
Green grass, running water Cover
Book

Green grass, running water

 

No summary available.
Ecotopia Cover
Book

Ecotopia

by Ernest Callenbach

Classic novel portraying a humane and joyous sustainable state in America.
Item Not Found
ID: 0684825554
(Type: books)
Item Not Found
ID: 0871568772
(Type: books)
Tex and Molly in the Afterlife Cover
Book

Tex and Molly in the Afterlife

by Richard Grant

Molly's and Tex's abrupt and accidental deaths have granted them a unique opportunity to brazenly reinvent their personal realities--not to mention a chance to commune with various forsaked ancient deities and down-and--out woodland spirits. But a pair of gentle souls once firmly rooted in the Earth cannot so easily vacate this corporeal plane. There are despoilers, witches, wolves, outlaw hackers, and rabid survivalists running wild through the soon-to-be corporately mutated Great North Woods. And Tex and Molly aren't about to vanish forever into the fast-moving eddy of Time until they take one last shot at profoundly influencing Eternity and this Life that is no longer theirs. Like a racous pagan dance in Thomas Pynchon's garden, here is a novel rich in intelligence, wit, unrestrained joy, and serious strangeness--a truly breathtaking flight of the imaginatino--written with style and heart by an award-winning storyteller whom the Washington Post once proclaimed "either a genius or a madman."