In 1924, the land surrounding the Gila River became the world's first official Wilderness when the Forest Service created a buffer around the only mountains in the American Southwest not invaded by development. Philip Connors (All the Wrong Places) has spent more than a dozen years as a fire lookout in the Gila, the job of "looking out a window" one he feels contentedly qualified to perform.
Continually threatened by political plans for "improvements" (mainly a dam allowing New Mexico to "give the concrete finger" to Arizona), the Gila remains mostly unspoiled. From the solitude of its dense mountaintops, Connors shares intimate recollections forged from the soil, timber and water of the Gila over the course of several summers. Replete with exquisite reverence for the land, A Song for the River is, at its core, a love story--essays on intimacy, grief, vulnerability and connectivity among men, women, children and the wilderness that binds them.
The epicenter is a 15-day period marred by five deaths, including a fellow lookout and three remarkable teens taking part in "experiential education." Connors weaves in captivating environmental and fire science issues, but his ruminations about new burns ("the birthday for the next forest"), interspersed with contemplations on finding meaning and solace after catastrophic loss, offer a dazzling display of emotion, too. Intensely intimate, Song feels written for the Gila, the souls lost and those who love them, but ends up a beautiful, voyeuristic experience that brings the reader into the fold. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review