This Tender Place: The Story of a Wetland Year

by Laurie Lawlor

    After the deaths of her father and father-in-law, Laurie Lawlor discovers an unlikely place for healing and transformation in a wetland in southeastern Wisconsin—a landscape of abundant and sometimes inaccessible beauty that has often been ignored, misunderstood, and threatened by human destruction. In her decade-long personal wetland journey, she examines the sky, delves underwater, and peers between sedges in all seasons and all times of day.
    This Tender Place is a celebration of nature, the elements, and humanity. From the wetland’s genesis during the ice age to its survival in the twenty-first century, Lawlor chronicles the universal ties among people, wild places, and healthy wetlands.

    An engaging and deeply intimate record, This Tender Place is at its heart a story of refuge and renewal refracted through the lens of life within the wetlands—one of the most productive, yet most endangered, ecosystems in the world.

Genres: Nature

190 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Laurie Lawlor grew up in a family enamored with the theater. Along with her five brothers and sisters she spent summers in a summer stock repertory company in a small mountain town in Colorado that was run by their mother (costumer, cook, accountant, and resident psychiatrist) and their father (artistic director).

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was quite disappointing. The writing is disjointed with inconsistent transitions from her personal experience in the wetlands of Wisconsin to the history of the area. The writing itself is unimpressive, her literary skills at times weak.

[Chi Dubinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book about the author’s love and appreciation for land that she and her husband bought in Walworth County. It is a book that begs to be read aloud, to fully appreciate the author’s artistry with language. Nature writing the in manner of Aldo Leopold.