"Bird Cloud" is the name the author gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four hundred foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. She also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope. She fell in love with the land, then owned by the Nature Conservancy, and she knew what she wanted to build on it, a house in harmony with her work, her appetites and her character, a library surrounded by bedrooms and a kitchen. Her first work of nonfiction in more than twenty years, this book is the story of designing and constructing that house, with its solar panels, Japanese soak tub, concrete floor and elk horn handles on kitchen cabinets. It is also an enthralling natural history and archaeology of the region, inhabited for millennia by Ute, Arapaho and Shoshone Indians, and a family history, going back to nineteenth century Mississippi riverboat captains and Canadian settlers. The author here turns her lens on herself. We understand how she came to be living in a house surrounded by wilderness, with shelves for thousands of books and long worktables on which to heap manuscripts, research materials and maps, and how she came to be one of the great American writers of her time.
OCLC:
(OCoLC)555641609
Locations:
USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)
BOPG851 -- Ames Public Library (Ames)
KSPG296 -- Burlington Public Library (Burlington)
SAPG074 -- Cedar Falls Public Library (Cedar Falls)
UNUX074 -- University of Northern Iowa - Rod Library (Cedar Falls)
TYPH572 -- Cedar Rapids Public Library (Cedar Rapids)
CBPF522 -- Coralville Public Library (Coralville)
XXPH787 -- Council Bluffs Public Library (Council Bluffs)
PLAX964 -- Luther College - Preus Library (Decorah)
PRAX771 -- Cowles Library (Des Moines)
VFPB334 -- Elgin Public Library (Elgin)
OIAX792 -- Grinnell College (Grinnell)
YCPD572 -- Hiawatha Public Library (Hiawatha)
OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)
MBPE423 -- Robert W. Barlow Memorial Library (Iowa Falls)
YEPF572 -- Marion Public Library (Marion)
LEPI975 -- Woodbury County Library (Moville)
GUPF501 -- Newton Public Library (Newton)
GZPE631 -- Pella Public Library (Pella)
BGPE251 -- Perry Public Library (Perry)
LAPH975 -- Sioux City Public Library (Sioux City)
CDPC522 -- Solon Public Library (Solon)
TVPD862 -- Louise & Lucile Hink -Tama Public Library (Tama)
GDPF771 -- Urbandale Public Library (Urbandale)
GEPG771 -- West Des Moines Public Library (West Des Moines)
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.