Hawk Flies Above
Copyright © 1996
by Lisa Dale Norton
Picador
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This story of childhood and loss blends with wonderfully evocative nature
writing. Lisa Norton grew up in the late 1950s and 1960s, spending summers
with her family at Lake Ericson, a reservoir of rich life set deep in the
rolling Nebraskan Sandhills. The time was blissful, but when her mother
suddenly left, Lisa began a troubled journey that took her far from home.
After years of to-and-fro travel, a horrifying event sent Norton
careening back to Lake Ericson — a home where she could recover herself,
understand her family, and begin to bear witness to a fragile land now
threatened by overuse.
Written with a poet's loving precision and the passion of a woman who
refuses to be a victim, Hawk Flies Above is a triumphant
performance. — from the jacket
A brave story of disturbance and reconciliation....A voice of strength has
descended. — Terry Tempest Williams
Powerful...an ambitious book...part nature writing, part memoir, part
ecological treatise. — Lincoln Star Journal
Hawk Flies Above offers a rare vision of the fragile and beautiful
Heartland. The author's journey toward self-discovery resonates with healing
and grace. — Craig Lesley
Growing up in a small Nebraska town, Norton had a magical
childhood until her mother abruptly abandoned her family.
Because of this and another traumatic event (shortly after college,
she was raped and beaten by a stranger who left her for dead), life
seemed meaningless, and for years she wandered aimlessly around
the country, drinking, smoking pot, overeating and trying to run
away from herself. In 1984, Norton returned for six months to the
cabin on Lake Ericson in the Nebraska Sandhills, where she and
her family had spent their summers, ostensibly to complete
graduate school by writing about the place but actually to come to
grips with her troubled past. Six years later, she went again to the
Sandhills, this time to discover that the land she considered idyllic
was suffering from its own problems-soil depletion, lakes fouled
by farm chemicals, limited water resources. In this memoir,
Norton recounts with disarming simplicity her attempts to find a
purpose in life by returning to her childhood home, weaving her
story together with sensitive descriptions of the windswept dunes,
the vegetation, the wildlife and the people of the endangered
Sandhills. Norton teaches writing at the Neahkahnie Institute in
Oregon. — Publishers Weekly
This autobiographical nature/recovery book chronicles the life of Norton
and the Nebraska Sandhills. Lake Ericson in the Big Six Country Club (the
name of the cabin her family purchased in 1960) became a necessary
haven for Norton as she struggled to put her life together in 1984. Norton
traces her stress to her parents' sudden divorce when she was a teenager,
after spending years of carefree summers predictably ensconced at the
lake. When she lost her sense of self as an adult, the cabin epitomized the
concept of home and kinship, as she fortified her soul with its calming
influence. During her respite, she found the strength to overcome the
trauma of rape as the Sandhills provided a sense of meaning, also allowing
her to overcome the debilitating effects of drinking and lack of purposeful
activity. This book will be an inspiration to anyone desiring to read
or write about life experiences. — Booklist
Part memoir, part nature essay, a roundabout search for a place of one's
own — in this case, on the high plains of Nebraska. In this debut book,
Norton writes of returning home from years of wandering to "an aging
reservoir on the Cedar River, part marsh, part bass lake, wellspring of my
childhood memories." Her travels from coast to coast, she writes, had
given her a close-up look at the blue highways and backroads of America,
an education in the art of rootlessness. They also delivered an
apprenticeship "in the field of emotion, learning the nuances of sadness,
depression, joy, and loss. I was a tabula rasa, allowing the world to etch
its patterns into me." Sadness outweighed joy, and her apprenticeship
led to a sickness of the soul, especially after she was raped and
then, for years, tried to bury the horrible memory in drink. "For long years
I felt afloat without mooring, without anchor," she writes, until she
finally returned to that place of childhood pleasures, a lean place "not
quite desert, yet no oasis either." Her account of finding a restorative
haven on familiar ground, among kin and friends, moves her slender book
from the nature shelf to that devoted to recovery, and it is a very worthy
addition to that library. As nature essay, though, Norton's book also
succeeds; she writes affectingly of the plants and animals that inhabit the
place — cedars, cranes, curlews, cottonwoods, sand roses, and other
manifestations of "simple beauty" — and of the cowboys and farmers who work
the land. These are all matters that can be written of well only after long
study and close observation, and it is clear that Norton has done her
homework and paid attention. This book merits a place alongside the work of
Terry Tempest Williams (who encouraged her) and Annie
Dillard. — Kirkus Reviews
First-time author Norton strikes a fine balance between memoir and nature
essay in writing of her homecoming to the wellspring of her childhood
memories, the Cedar River of Nebraska. She had come home to nurse the
grief of having been raped and of trying to drown the memory of that
horrible event in alcohol. "For long years I felt afloat without mooring,
without anchor," she writes, until she finally returned to that lean and
austere place of childhood pleasures. Her account of finding a psychic
center among family and friends is affecting without being sentimental, and
Norton writes warmly of the plants and animals that inhabit this
place — cranes, curlews, sand roses, and other denizens of the High
Plains — and of the people who work the land. — Amazon.com
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