Alumni Book Club

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

Golden Vale, Louisiana, is a hardscrabble coastal town 80 miles south of New Orleans but worlds away culturally. For generations, families have made their living working in commercial fishing or in the petroleum industry. After the sudden death of his father, thirty-five-year-old Jordan Pearce becomes the unwitting head of his family's storied oyster company. Amid Jordan's struggles with flighty employees, a fraught romantic life, living with his distressed, widowed mother, and a fishery that's been on life support for years, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig suddenly explodes off the coast of Louisiana, prompting one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

As fallout from the explosion and subsequent oil spill intensifies, Jordan must grapple with the existential repercussions for his family, and the surrounding community, which has already seen its fair share of hardship, having just barely recovered from Hurricane Katrina. Forced to seek help from his estranged brother, Benny―a beatnik musician who ran away to New Orleans years ago―Jordan and what's left of the quarrelsome Pearce clan are reunited under one roof, alongside a cast of unforgettable regional characters. Jordan’s desperation to save the business, coupled with Benny’s desire to distance himself from his past, test the bonds of their family and the strength of their principles. Together, they must commit to saving this long-overlooked corner of the Gulf Coast―a final act of hope in the face of impending tragedy.