From the award-winning author of the North of the Tension Line
series comes a timely, heartfelt collection of essays.
In the lyrical prose style familiar to her readers, author J.F. Riordan
records a natural world minutely observed. From an examination of life's
fragility via a bathtub spider, to a tree-borne cluster of raccoons
huddled together in a polar vortex, the essays capture the peculiar
isolation, focus, and intensity of the pandemic lockdown, while marking
the contrast of nature's ruthlessness with human suffering.
"Our life's landscape isn't geographical. It's human. When you are
young, life is an endless horizon of years ahead. It's hard to realize
how fast time goes, and how quickly the people we assume will always be
here can suddenly be gone, changing the world forever. It's easy to
allow the demands of every day to take up our energy and our hours. But
in this, in every day, we have the essence of our lives. Our lives are
only time, and, however far off the horizon seems, finite."
Deeply insightful and personal, by turns soulful and humorous, But
Still They Sing belongs at the bedside of anyone in search of the
comfort and companionship of a humane voice.
