Doubling Back: Ten Paths Trodden in Memory

Sports & Outdoors

Cracknell, Linda

Hiking & Camping

best foot books

The Other Side of Stone

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Taproot Press

A beautifully written, haunting tale of motherhood, guilt, myth, and redemption set on the rugged coast at Scotland's furthest edgeWhen Maggie Thame, a childless 40-something woman from Oxford, relocates to a remote village at Scotland's most northern edge, it's clear she's running away. But to the villagers of Duncanby the question remains, from what? Pursuing her career as a freelance cartographer, she lives in self-imposed isolation, seeking refuge in the harsh beauty of her surroundings. This is disturbed when she falls into an uneasy friendship with Trothan Gilbertson, a strange, otherworldly local nine-year-old. Like Maggie, it's unclear where Trothan really comes from, and what secrets might be lurking in his past. The lives of both become intertwined, with violent consequences that will change the lives of the woman and boy forever, forcing Maggie to confront the tragic events that first drew her to this isolated place. This debut novel explores themes of motherhood, guilt, myth, and the elemental forces of nature in a lyrical, taut, and haunting account of damaged lives seeking redemption.

Call of the Undertow

Literary

Freight Books

Doubling Back

In 1952, Linda Cracknell's father embarked on a hike through the Swiss Alps. It was the last walk he would ever take. Linda retraces that fateful journey 50 years later, following the trail of the man she barely knew. This collection of walking tales take their theme from that pilgrimage. The walks trace the contours of memories, following friends, writers, and relations along trails across mountains, valleys, and coasts from the Highlands of Scotland to Kenya. Each walk is about the reaffirming of memories, beliefs, and emotions, and especially of the connection that one can have with the past. This book celebrates life, family, friendship, and walking through mountain landscapes richly textured with stories. A masterwork of travel writing in the vein of Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin, this lyrical, poignant book contains stunning landscape descriptions.

Inhabiting a landscape, walking a landscape, writing a place and time. Linda Cracknell is a writer of place and nature who believes in being alert, observing, and writing from the particulars of each experience. Engaging bodily with her writing, she is someone for whom getting mud on her boots, sleeping high up in the hills, or being slapped by salt water can all be part of her process. She follows Susan Sontag's advice to "Love words, agonize over sentences and pay attention to the world." In this varied collection of essays, Linda backpacks on a small island that is connected to the mainland at low tide, musing on the nineteenth-century Scottish writer whose character was shipwrecked there. She hikes the wooded mountain trail close to her home in winter snow--a place she is intimately familiar with in all weathers and seasons--and she retraces the steps of a multiday hike made almost seven decades after her parents trod the route together. She explores her inspirations, in nature and from other artists and their work. Reading this collection will open your eyes to the world around you and how you can observe, take note, and later commit those notes and memories to written pieces that will evoke the place and time.

Writing Landscape (In the Moment)

Religion & Spirituality

Saraband

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Books by Cracknell, Linda