The long way home : detours and discoveries

The long way home Detours and discoveries

Tom Montgomery-Fate

Book - 2022

In a travel memoir that ventures from his smalltown upbringing to vastly different cultures around the globe, Tom Montgomery Fate comes to define "home" not as a physical location, but as a way of belonging. "Migrating birds have an internal compass that allows them to home their way back to their nesting place each spring," he writes. "For birds, home is both verb and noun--both journey and destination." The same is true for Fate. Whether he is bobbing in a canoe in the freezing rain with his son on a Canadian lake, praying with Lakota elders in a sweat lodge in South Dakota, or teaching English in a remote Filipino village, these are not stories of arrival. They are detours of discovery, a spiritual wayfindin...g through the wilderness of time and memory.

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Subjects
Montgomery-Fate, Tom > Travel.
Nature > Effect of human beings on.
Travel writing.
Genres
Travel writing
Published
North Liberty : Ice Cube Press, LLC 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Tom Montgomery-Fate (author)
Physical Description
167 pages ; 21 cm
ISBN
9781948509367
  • Detours Home: An Introduction
  • Fishing for My Father
  • The Presence of Absence
  • Weekend Monk
  • Detours of Intention
  • A Great Plenty
  • Once More to the Lake, the Elephant, and the Weasel
  • On Saving/Seeing the World
  • The Rain Makes the Roof Sing
  • The Future Behind Us
  • Lost and Found in the Holy Land
  • A Map To Somewhere
  • Travel That Takes You Home
Review by Booklist Review

Fate (Cabin Fever, 2011) is the son of a small-town minister and a professor of creative writing. Both roles serve him well in this beautifully written travel memoir. For Fate, travel is more than an attempt to collect passport stamps and check off bucket lists. It's a chance to see rather than look. It's the time to ask, "What am I doing here?" and search for answers. Residing in Illinois, his heart longs for the open land of his boyhood in Iowa. His travels evoke thoughtful memories as well as his struggles with faith. The last days and funerals of both of his parents are recalled with poignancy; his weekend retreat at a monastery becomes a preview of the coming COVID-19 isolation. Participating in a sweat lodge opens his mind; a few weeks exploring a scientifically monitored forest raises questions of life and death. At ease out of doors, Fate is moved by nature and finding God in the unexpected. Each affecting essay captures his destinations and the emotions they prompt as he works himself ever homeward.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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