NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A powerful work of visual nonfiction about three
generations of an Apache family struggling to protect sacred land from a
multinational mining corporation, by MacArthur "Genius" and National
Book Award finalist Lauren Redniss, the acclaimed author of Thunder &
Lightning
"Brilliant . . . virtuosic . . . a master storyteller of a new
order."--Eliza Griswold, The New York Times Book Review (Editors'
Choice)
**
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS**
Oak Flat is a serene high-elevation mesa that sits above the
southeastern Arizona desert, fifteen miles to the west of the San Carlos
Apache Indian Reservation. For the San Carlos tribe, Oak Flat is a holy
place, an ancient burial ground and religious site where Apache girls
celebrate the coming-of-age ritual known as the Sunrise Ceremony. In
1995, a massive untapped copper reserve was discovered nearby. A decade
later, a law was passed transferring the area to a private company,
whose planned copper mine will wipe Oak Flat off the map--sending its
natural springs, petroglyph-covered rocks, and old-growth trees tumbling
into a void.
Redniss's deep reporting and haunting artwork anchor this mesmerizing
human narrative. Oak Flat tells the story of a race-against-time
struggle for a swath of American land, which pits one of the poorest
communities in the United States against the federal government and two
of the world's largest mining conglomerates. The book follows the
fortunes of two families with profound connections to the contested
site: the Nosies, an Apache family whose teenage daughter is an activist
and leader in the Oak Flat fight, and the Gorhams, a mining family whose
patriarch was a sheriff in the lawless early days of Arizona statehood.
The still-unresolved Oak Flat conflict is ripped from today's headlines,
but its story resonates with foundational American themes: the saga of
westward expansion, the resistance and resilience of Native peoples, and
the efforts of profiteers to control the land and unearth treasure
beneath it while the lives of individuals hang in the balance.
