Price: $16.00
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During
the Vietnam War, a group of American friends carved their own path by dropping
out of college and traveling to Australia, where they established an agrarian
commune called Rosebud Farm. The friends, fueled by idealism and family wealth,
committed themselves to farming, fishing, taking great risks, and dealing with
the consequences of their choices, among those consequences the tragic death
of twenty-four-year-old Charlie Dean.
"As much a chronicle of a lost time and generation, Louella Bryant’s While
in Darkness There is Light is a gripping portrait of a valiant yet troubled group
of idealists, free spirits, and the scions of the American aristocracy trying
to navigate a turbulent time. Told in unadorned yet compelling prose, Bryant
brings the reader on a journey from the prep schools of the East Coast to a commune
in Australia and the jungles of Laos, and in doing so, creates a story that trades
not in nostalgia but in inspiration."
—Robin Hemley, Director of the University of Iowa Nonfiction
Writing Program
"A bittersweet coming-of-age story that wanders from Harvard Yard to the Australian
outback to the jungles of Laos, While in Darkness There is Light recaptures some
of what was most inspiring and some of what was most heartbreaking about America
in the early 1970s. This book is both a celebration and an elegy; it filled me
with an enduring sense of wonder and of loss."
—George Howe Colt, author of The Big House, 2003 National Book
Award nominee
"This riveting book held me from start to finish. It’s a wonderfully researched
story of idealism, a portrait of an era, and a narrative of unusual force that
takes us into unlikely, dark, beautiful places. Louella Bryant has done an admirable
job here, summoning an era of remarkable dreams. I won’t forget this book
for a long time, if ever."
—Jay Parini, author of The Apprentice Lover
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Louella Bryant has won
numerous awards for her short stories and poems. She
is the author of two young-adult historical novels. The
Black Bonnet, finalist for the Vermont Book Award,
and Father By Blood, winner of the Silver Bay Children's
Literature Award, and a picture book, Two Tracks in
the Snow. Louella teaches creative writing in the Spalding
University MFA in Writing program in Louisville and mentors
young writers at the New England Young Writers Conference
at Bread Loaf. |
