The Last Cheater's Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest

In this abundant space and isolation, the energy lords extract their bounty of natural resources, and the curators of mass destruction once mined their egregious weapons and reckless acts. It is a land of absolutes, of passion and indifference, lush textures and inscrutable tensions. Here violence can push beauty to the edge of a razor blade. . . . Thus Ellen Meloy describes a corner of desert hard by the San Juan River in southeastern Utah, a place long forsaken as implausible and impassable, of little use or value--a place that she calls home. Despite twenty years of carefully nurtured intimacy with this red-rock landscape, Meloy finds herself, one sunbaked morning, staring down at a dead lizard floating in her coffee and feeling suddenly unmoored. What follows is a quest that is both physical and spiritual, a search for home.

Author: Ellen Meloy
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 11/01/2000
Pages: 239
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.61lbs
Size: 8.19h x 5.58w x 0.55d
ISBN13: 9780816521531
ISBN10: 0816521530
BISAC Categories:
- Nature | Essays

About the Author
Ellen Meloy is also the author of The Anthropology of Turquoise