Amy Blackmarr

When the award of a graduate fellowship brings Amy Blackmarr to Kansas from her grandfather’s old pond-side fishing shack in rural South Georgia—"where the scents of pine straw on damp mornings and peanuts drying in October fields were deep and warm and familiar"—she rents a hippie house in the country that quickly becomes the setting for a tangled string of quirky events. With characteristic humor, irony, and an unfailing sense of wonder, Blackmarr gets lost in the woods, battles wasps but falls in love with a roach, frets over the "corruption" of her mother, calls the sheriff on her neighbors, laments her perfectionism, collects bugs in a bowl, and takes in yet another stray dog. The chaotic, often contemplative, always revealing journey into her own nature is reflected in the vibrant natural settings Blackmarr inhabits; yet her discoveries provide readers warm and lyrical proof that they don’t have to escape into the woods to understand themselves, or their world, more deeply. Originally published in 1999, this edition of House of Steps includes a new unpublished essay.

"Amy Blackmarr’s House of Steps is a wonderful book, a true celebration of the spirit of living. Here is a writer with a mesmerizing talent."

—Terry Kay, author of To Dance with the White Dog