Beyond Desert Walls: Essays from Prison

Product Description “From the upper bunk where I write, a narrow window allows me a southern exposure of the desert beyond this prison. Saguaro cacti, residents here long before this rude concrete pueblo, fill the upper part of my frame. If I could open the window and reach out across the razed ground, sand traps, and shining perimeter fence, I might touch their fluted sides, their glaucous and waxen skins.”   For some people, even prison cannot shut out the natural world. A teacher and family man incarcerated in Arizona State Prison—the result of a transgression that would cost him a dozen years of his life—Ken Lamberton can see beyond his desert walls. In essays that focus on the natural history of the region and on his own personal experiences with desert places, the author of the Burroughs Medal-winning book Wilderness and Razor Wire takes readers along as he revisits the Southwest he knew when he was free, and as he makes an inner journey toward self-awareness. Whether considering the seemingly eternal cacti or the desolate beauty of the Pinacate, he draws on sharp powers of observation to re-create what lies beyond his six-by-eight cell and to contemplate the thoughts that haunt his mind as tenaciously as the kissing bugs that haunt his sleep. Ranging from prehistoric ruins on the Colorado Plateau to the shores of the Sea of Cortez, these writings were begun before Wilderness and Razor Wire and serve as a prequel to it. They seamlessly interweave natural and personal history as Lamberton explores caves, canyons, and dry ponds, evoking the mysteries and rhythms of desert life that elude even the most careful observers. He offers new ways of thinking about how we relate to the natural world, and about the links between those relationships and the ones we forge with other people. With the assurance of a gifted writer, he seeks to make sense of his own place in life, crafting words to come to terms with an insanity of his own making, to look inside himself and understand his passions and flaws. Whether considering rattlesnakes of the hellish summer desert or the fellow inmates of his own personal hell, Lamberton finds meaningful connections—to his crime and his place, to the people who remained in his life and those who didn’t. But what he reveals in Beyond Desert Walls ultimately arises from language itself: a deep, and perhaps even frightening, understanding of a singular human nature. From Booklist Lamberton, a former schoolteacher and current freelance writer, presents a sequel to his first collection of essays, Wilderness and Razor Wire (2000). While these 15 essays offer glimpses into Lamberton's 12-year prison stint for a relationship with a teenage student, the majority focus on his experiences as a naturalist. Enamored of the Sonoran Desert as a child, Lamberton went on to study biology in college, eventually taking a teaching position at a high school in Arizona. But it wasn't until his incarceration that he became a conservationist. Each short essay describes a transforming experience: a man in the habit of acquiring "samples" from the desert realizes that avoidance may be the only way to save nesting gray hawks. The immature 28-year-old more interested in being a friend than a teacher to his young students discovers his talent as "a teacher's aide to the desert." Written over more than a decade, there is some repetition within the essays, but Lamberton is a skilled writer with a restless and discerning eye. Rebecca MakselCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review “The book is a thought-provoking account of one man’s quest to look beyond his prison cell and find inner peace through nature.”—E Magazine From the Inside Flap ""From the upper bunk where I write, a narrow window allows me a southern exposure of the desert beyond this prison. Saguaro cacti, residents here long before this rude concrete pueblo, fill the upper part of my frame. If I could open t