Heart of Home:: People, Wildlife, Place - Hardcover

In this collection of magazine pieces, mostly from Sports Afield and Outside, hunter and outdoors writer Ted Kerasote (Bloodties) offers his well-considered thoughts on matters such as the ethics of killing wildlife for sport, the merits of catch-and-release fishing, and the necessity of habitat preservation in a time when so much wild land across the world is being threatened by development. We need, he writes, to take a more active role in protecting such places, "to participate, to plunge our hands into the consonant and sometimes poignant beauty, the authentic living and dying, that remain on the planet." Some readers will find his views on blood sports controversial, to be sure. The collection is a mixed bag, with the strongest pieces drawing on Kerasote's varied experiences in the wild--mostly in the northern Rocky Mountains, but as far afield as Chile (during the Pinochet coup) and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

Advance praise for Heart of Home

"A beautiful volume, a rare treasure, and testimony to a life of bounty lived amidst the public wildlands."
--Rick Bass, author of The Deer Pasture

"Speaking as someone who values animals fully as much as people, I'm astonished to find myself so deeply moved by a book that discusses the morality of hunting and fishing. Kerasote raises all the right questions and answers them brilliantly."
--Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

"Heart of Home expands our thinking as to our authentic ties to animals and what the appropriate role of the hunter might be."
--Terry Tempest Williams, author of Refuge

"Heart of Home takes us back to the wilds, to Mother Earth, to all creatures wild and free."
--Valerius Geist, author of Elk Country

"At once sensible and sensitive, by turns subtly humorous and profoundly moving, Ted Kerasote once again works his particular kind of earth-magic. A warning: The heart he breaks may be your own."
--Mary Zeiss Stange, director of women's studies, Skidmore College, and author of Woman the Hunter

"Original, colorful, and richly textured, Heart of Home has the quality of a great American landscape painting."
--Todd Wilkinson, western correspondent, The Christian Science Monitor

"A lyrical quest for natural truths."
--David Petersen, author of Ghost Grizzlies