Cabin fever : a suburban father's search for the wild

 by Tom Montgomery-Fate. Fate, the author of four previous books and an essayist whose work appears on National Public Radio and in diverse newspapers and magazines, debates his mentor, Henry David Thoreau, in a sequence of inquiring, superbly constructed essays. As Thoreau does in Walden, Fate encapsulates a year's worth of experiences and reflections, but his musings are anchored to not only the cabin he builds in southwest Michigan but also the suburban Chicago home he shares with his wife and three children. An English professor and a writer, a family man seeking solitude, and a book lover reading by candlelight as his computer slumbers, Fate seeks a middle way. The son of a pastor and a seminary graduate, Fate discerns invaluable lessons in living from watching birds and ants at work and his son at play, walking in the woods, sitting with a dying friend, listening to the roar of interstate traffic, and contemplating the lives of suburban coyotes. His frank, poignant, and funny essays grapple with the quandaries inherent in the effort to live a balanced life. Fate's clarion musings on place, time, family, social responsibility, the wild, and the civilized are thoughtful and affecting in their revelations of how complex and precious life is. --Booklist (Check Catalog)