Laura Julier Tells Her Story of Hiding From Grief… and Awaking From It.

 

Author Laura Julier will visit Beaverdale Books at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 22 to share her new book, Off Izaak Walton Road: The Grace That Comes Through Loss.  Loss and sorrow can overwhelm even the strongest person, forcing them to reckon with their emotions, whether they want to or not. In this extraordinary debut, Julier recounts her reckoning, which took place in an old cabin tucked away on a hidden and forgotten gravel road along the Iowa River. In company with silence and snow, with eagles, owls, and a host of other birds, Julier finds solace and begins to emerge from the dark corners of grief. Over time, she comes to understand she cannot bury grief or turn aside from loss but must walk in its
presence, awake and humble, until, at last, she finds her own wholeness within it.

 

Laura Julier is the former editor of Fourth Genre and the co-editor of Nonfiction, the Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones. She currently works as a hospital chaplain and lives in Iowa City.

 

 

“Laura Julier in Off Izaak Walton Road marks out the perimeter of the losses in her life, not by confiding them to the page but by careful indirection. She brings the reader with her as she retreats to a house on a rural road and, season by season, discovers the particulars of the world that goes on without all of us. Her power of attention is formidable, and her prose is at every  point lucid.”—Sven Birkerts, author of The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing.