Into Woods is an exuberant, profound, and often wonderfully funny account of ten years in the life of its award-winning author, Bill Roorbach. A paean to nature, to love, to family, and to place, Into Woods provides a sequel to Roorbach's first book, the critically acclaimed and popular Summers with Juliet, which traced Roorbach's courtship of Juliet Karelsen, ending with their wedding on the water. Into Woods begins with their honeymoon on a wine farm in the Loire Valley of France and closes with the birth of their new daughter and return to their beloved Maine. Thoroughly original, the essays of Into Woods blend journalism, memoir, personal narrative, nature writing, cultural criticism, and rare insight into a narrative of place, a meditation on being and belonging, love and death, wonder and foreboding. The title essay, "Into Woods," is a portrait of the writer as a young man; it is also a hymn to work and men. This evocative essay sets the theme for the rest of the collection. "Spirits," "Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine," "Duck Day Afternoon," "Birthday," and "Sky Pond" all pay homage to Bill's life in Maine. "You Have Given This Boy Life," perhaps the most haunting essay in the collection, describes Bill's middle-aged preoccupation with death, leading to a strange catalogue of cadavers, but no deliverance from fear. "Vortex," a lovely reprise of the subjects of Summers with Juliet, is all about fishing on Martha's Vineyard. "Scioto Blues" is the unforgettable tale of Bill's walks with his dogs along the trash-infested Scioto River, as if flows through Columbus, Ohio. With his characteristic wit, Bill narrates the funk and glory of a place that somehow manages to keep its dignity despite all of the degradation. Finally, "My Life as a Move" discusses the pervasive American move-for-work phenomenon, cataloguing Bill's own numerous moves and his and Juliet's decision to move back to Maine, where they hope they belong.

Into Woods: Essays by Bill Roorbach

Literature & Fiction

ROORBACH, BILL

Essays & Correspondence

Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Into Woods: Essays

I call the stream ours because our house is in its valley and a corner of our land touches the stream at a dramatic bend, and because my wife and our daughter (always in the company of our dogs) walk down to that bend every morning, every season. The stream is our point of contact with all the waters of the world. Great blue herons, yellow birches, damselflies, and beavers are among the many runes by which Bill Roorbach discovers a universe of nature along the stream that runs by his home in Farmington, Maine. Populated by an oddball cast of characters to whom the generous-spirited Roorbach (aka “The Professor”) and his family might always be outsiders, these pages chronicle one man’s determination – sometimes with hilarious results – to follow his stream directly to its elusive source. Acclaimed essayist as well as award-winning author of fiction, Bill Roorbach brings his singular literary gifts to a book that is inspirational, funny, loving, and filled with the wonder of living side by side with the natural world. Praise for Bill Roorbach “Roorbach falls, for me, into that small category of writers whose every book I must read, then reread.” —Jay Parini, author of The Apprentice Lover “Here is a narrator who makes you glad to be alive, giddy to be in his presence, grateful to love friends and family and dogs with generosity and abandon, to show tenderness and thus be saved by strangers.” —Melanie Rae Thon, author of First, Body “Roorbach is a master at capturing and expressing joy.” —Hartford Courant “Roorbach has a knack for tapping into deep undercurrents and bringing them to the surface with the least amount of fanfare or fuss.” —L.A. Weekly

Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

The Dial Press

Dial Press Trade Paperback

The author tells how he met, courted, and married his sweetheart, and chronicles the rediscovery of his childhood enchantment with nature

Summers With Juliet

Houghton/Mifflin

They met in a bar on Martha's Vineyard. Bill was instantly smitten-her cool beauty, her insouciance, her sassy youth-but Juliet was unimpressed. Even so, a courtship began, and for the next eight summers, in sublime settings across North America, Bill Roorbach and Juliet Karelsen made circuitous progress toward a lasting love, and finally, marriage. In charming fashion, Summers with Juliet tells this tale, but it also chronicles a second awakening, as Juliet rekindles in Bill his childhood enchantment with nature. Now marvelous creatures abound: giant ocean sunfish and wild turkeys, bellicose hummingbirds and canny trout, all of them images and explications of the many facets of Juliet. Landscapes hold new mysteries, too, and the author vividly describes his exuberant road trips with Juliet around the country, from the River of Promise in Montana, to the Gulf Coast of Florida. And at last, they come to a wooded lake in New Hampshire and the singular June day when "loves all there, sweeter than the cake."

Summers with Juliet

Romance

Ohio State University Press

Through quirky plots, one-of-kind characters, and more than a few twists, the stories in Big Bend examine gentle-hearted men and their relationships. From made-in-heaven meetings to troublesome liaisons, Roorbach's characters experience romance in unexpected, sometimes disastrous ways.
In "Fog," a teenage boy learns hard lessons about canoes, the Gulf of Maine, sex, and love. A struggling young artist goes home for the holidays in search of succor for the stomach―and heart―with poor results in "Thanksgiving." Other stories recount the ultimately disastrous reunion of estranged friends, an unemployed architect's foolish courting with bad company, and a middle-aged rock star's struggle with the urge to settle down. In the tiitle story, "Big Bend," a grieving widower, troubled by his own waning years, is tempted by a seductively attentive birdwatcher no older than his daughter.
Poignant tales of hauntingly familiar situations, Bill Roorbach's stories are full of heart, romance, edgy humor, and the frequently concealed vulnerability of men.

Big Bend: Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

Univ of Georgia Pr

Through quirky plots, one-of-kind characters, and more than a few twists, the stories in Big Bend examine gentle-hearted men and their relationships. From made-in-heaven meetings to troublesome liaisons, Roorbach's characters experience romance in unexpected, sometimes disastrous ways.In "Fog," a teenage boy learns hard lessons about canoes, the Gulf of Maine, sex, and love. A struggling young artist goes home for the holidays in search of succor for the stomach―and heart―with poor results in "Thanksgiving." Other stories recount the ultimately disastrous reunion of estranged friends, an unemployed architect's foolish courting with bad company, and a middle-aged rock star's struggle with the urge to settle down. In the tiitle story, "Big Bend," a grieving widower, troubled by his own waning years, is tempted by a seductively attentive birdwatcher no older than his daughter.Poignant tales of hauntingly familiar situations, Bill Roorbach's stories are full of heart, romance, edgy humor, and the frequently concealed vulnerability of men.

Big Bend: Stories (Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction)

Contemporary

University of Georgia Press

In a trio of wonderful, long essays, a nature writer, a poet, and an essayist/novelist let us sit in on their friendship and what draws them, inexorably, to the same small pond in Maine. A joyful, unforgettable book. Bob, living in a farmhouse near the pond, buys a dilapidated camp at the water's edge and finds his way down there almost daily, to swim or ski, depending on the season. His friends discover the allure of the pond, too--summer afternoons of swimming with Bob, his wife Rita, and an assortment of canine dog-paddlers, or companionable conversations over a beer, enjoying the beauty of a quiet pond beyond the porch. Bob tells the McNairs about a neighboring camp up for sale, a perfect little camp, compact as a ship in all its details, and they buy it. Roorbach feels drawn to the pond so strongly that he and his wife sometimes bushwack through underbrush so as not to intrude, but the pond is a place where this trio of friendships flourishes. Told with humor and affection, the stories in this small book will appeal to anyone who feels drawn to spend time near water.

A Place on Water: Essays

History

Kimber, Robert

McNair, Welsey

Americas

Tilbury House

"Brilliant . . . A tale that is as gripping as any Everest expedition--and that is also tender and terrifying and funny and, in the end, so true it seems inevitable . . . I'm not sure there's another American writing today who can lay down a love story, or any story, with the depth and appeal and freshness of Bill Roorbach." --Peter Heller, author of "The Dog Stars" and "The Painter" When the "Storm of the Century" threatens western Maine, Eric closes his law office early and heads to the grocery store. In line ahead of him, an unkempt and seemingly unstable young woman comes up short on cash, so Eric offers her twenty bucks and a ride home. Trouble is, Danielle doesn't really have a home. She's squatting in a cabin deep in the woods: no electricity, no plumbing, no heat. She'll need food, water, and firewood just to get her through the storm, and there's a whole long winter ahead. Fending off her violent mistrust of him, he gets her set up, departs with relief, and climbs back to the road, but--winds howling, snow mounting--he finds his car missing, phone inside. In desperation, he returns to the cabin. And as the storm intensifies, these two lost souls are forced to ride it out together."The Remedy for Love" is an intensely moving, frequently funny story about the truths we reveal when there is no time or space for artifice. "A superbly grown-up love story . . . Another expertly delivered portrait of the world from Roorbach, that poet of hopeless tangles." --"Kirkus Reviews, " starred "One of the best novels of this or any year . . . A flat-out funny, sexy, and poignant romantic thriller." --David Abrams, author of "Fobbit"

The Remedy For Love

United States

Thorndike Press

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