About the Book
SYNOPSIS
“Richard Shelton came to southern Arizona as a young man in the army, got married, bought his wife a piano, and settled into the beginnings of a distinguished career as a teacher and poet. In Going Back to Bisbee he gives us a memoir of those years interwoven with an intimate and detailed report on the relationship between the contingencies of local history and the enduring particularities of the natural world. If you love the Southwestern deserts you will love this book. If you don’t know them, this book will lead you to them.”Read an excerpt
- Book Award Jurors, Western States Arts Federation
From Going Back to Bisbee by Richard Shelton. © 1992 The Arizona Board of Regents. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press. This material is protected from unauthorized downloading and distribution.
READ REVIEWS
“Poet Shelton has created a powerful annal of place -- a paean to the Sonoran desert south of Tucson, a landscape as prickly as the cacti that grow in it and yet as refreshing as a rainy-season rainstorm. Shelton imbues landscapes, flora and fauna with resonance, imprinting themes of memory, history and human nature in the reader’s mind.”
- Publishers Weekly
“This book, winner of the 1992 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction, offers the reader a glimpse into life and landscape in a mountainous mining region in extreme southeastern Arizona. Shelton, the author of several works of poetry…became enraptured with the area as an army draftee and stayed to teach junior high English in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Now living in Tucson, he recounts a recent nostalgic journey back to the area that incorporates natural history with a marvelous sense of place.”
- Library Journal
“Poet-professor Shelton (English/Univ. of Arizona) offers his first full-length prose work--and it’s cause for celebration. Enlivening his picaresque narrative with vivacity, humor, and an eye for significant detail, he proves to be a splendid traveling companion.”
- Kirkus Reviews
Visit your local library to borrow a copy of Going Back to Bisbee. Or purchase it from the University of Arizona Press.