Finding Beauty in a Broken World [Paperback]

Shards of glass can cut and wound or magnify a vision, Terry Tempest Williams tells us. Mosaic celebrates brokenness and the beauty of being brought together. Ranging from Ravenna, Italy, where she learns the ancient art of mosaic, to the American Southwest, where she observes prairie dogs on the brink of extinction, to a small village in Rwanda where she joins genocide survivors to build a memorial from the rubble of war, Williams searches for meaning and community in an era of physical and spiritual fragmentation.

In her compassionate meditation on how nature and humans both collide and connect, Williams affirms a reverence for all life, and constructs a narrative of hopeful acts, taking that which is broken and creating something whole.“Beautyis Williams's most important, most visceral, most demanding work. It should–no must–be read.” –The Baltimore Sun

“An amalgam of art, intellect, ecology and spirit. . . . Moving. . . . Terry Tempest Williams’s tools are words, ideas, sentences, fragments. . . . She uses them to dig into chosen corners of our world, and to illuminate some unknowns in flickering light.” –The Washington Times

“Sublime art. . . . An ambitious, even audacious, work.” –The Denver Post

“Intense, tough, profound. . . . This is an ambitious, risk-taking book that defies narrative conventions and avoids signpost solutions. Yet it also prompts reflection, inspiration, and awe. . . . A resounding hymn to creativity, community and engagement.” –Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“Williams is an ecosystem writer–concepts in her world are joined together by physical and spiritual threads... Finding Beauty in a Broken Worldoffers its answers in fragments, pieces–as a mosaic must…. And yet there is always beauty.” –Los Angeles Times