Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet

by Amy Kaler

Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to “go west,” Amy Kaler’s Westbound on a Hot Planet offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. Her memoir weaves together three living with the knowledge of one’s own aging and mortality; the slow-moving catastrophes of climate change; and the human history of the North American settler west, especially locations that hold traces of vanished pasts. Many of the “ruins” Kaler explores—faded hamlets, bunkers, fields of cars, bends in the river—are interesting in themselves, and some serve as emblems of hope, generational commitment abandoned by contemporary heirs, faith, hubris, even carelessness. These stops are intertwined with reflections on aging, temporality, and change, making the book feel like a deeply satisfying road trip with a thoughtful friend. Moving from meditative to sobering in compelling and measured ways, Half-Light shimmers with urgency and suggestion.

219 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 22, 2024

Reviews

[Alberta Views Magazine]

Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet is Amy Kaler’s collection of short essays about “going west,” both literally and metaphorically. Her exploration is part travel journalism, part memoir and part cultural criticism. “While I am geographically westbound, in a place whose past is… not mine by choice,” she writes, “I am also bound for the west in a chronological and mythical sense.”

In the prologue, Kaler tells us her book is about three things: getting older, the settler west, and living during a climate catastrophe, but these ideas never quite come together to create a unified whole. The idea of “going west” is loosely applied but not always successfully, and once in a while I found myself skimming to the next essay. In spite of this, there is much to appreciate in Kaler’s writing....

Review by Roberta Laurie
Full review at https://albertaviews.ca/half-light/