'Here is no gentle romantic twirling a buttercup.Miss Dillard is stalking the reader as surely as any predator stalks its game.Here is not only a habitat of cruelty and 'the waste of pain,' but the savage and magnificent world of the Old Testament, presided over by a passionate Jehovah with no Messiah in sight.A remarkable psalm of terror and celebration. The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she invokes better than anyone else.' - The Guardian 'With Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, we suddenly find ourselves in the presence of an ecstatic and visionary genius. “One of the most distinctive voices in American letters today.” - Boston Globe Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of 'beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.' Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. There is an ambition about her book that I like.It is the ambition to feel.” - Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review

A reader’s heart must go out to a young writer with a sense of wonder so fearless and unbridled. Dillards personal narrative highlights one years exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. What she sees are astonishing incidents of beauty tangled in a rapture with violence.

Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. “The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. The book takes place over the period of one year and was derived from Dillards journals, which she kept daily for several years in the 1970s while living in the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia in them, she recorded and reflected upon her daily walks around Tinker Creek, the stream near her home. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginias Roanoke Valley. “A remarkable psalm of terror and celebration.” - Time magazine

“This book of wonder is one of the most truly beautiful books of this or any season.

Pilgrim at tinker creek review