Review 234: Believers

Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World by Lisa Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a powerful book. One that is not about bemoaning the state of the Earth today, but instead on how we can heal, ourselves and the land. Lisa Wells introduces us to several people who are living wildly, living to restore nature and some with unusual ways. We are first introduced to Finisia Medrona who replants prairies and deserts with edible foods, who now has a group of followers. Her group of “Prairie Faeries” or landtenders on occasion plant a hillside of edibles in the shape of letters such as “This is food.” Finisia’s dedication to replanting is tied with religious overtones while spouting a foul mouth being quite cantankerous to outsides and those who live a “typical” western lifestyle. She’s lived an itinerant lifestyle, for years living in a cave or traveled by covered wagon.

Starting the book with an outlier, it is a sharp awakening that there are other ways to live, or how to interact with the environment. Much of the book is infused with religion, talk of healing ourselves from the trauma that has happened (something is wrong when we have so many people addicted to various vices), and restoring nature.

Wells interweaves her own personal story as well, leaving high school in Portland and along with her friends, joins a wilderness survival school. Wells interlaces the people that shaped her life, important books such as Daniel Quinn’s book Ishmael, and her friends. We are also introduced to many others, people who have done something radically different and have results that prove that the ecosystem can be restored, and at an amazingly fast pace.

This book is about people who believe that we can move beyond this current climate crisis, we have the ability to heal what is broken. Wells shows us people who are doing just that.

‘How, then, shall we live’ is asked many times. Some answers are here. It is a hopeful book, albeit not an easy read at times. It can be eye-opening or maybe, world changing.



Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.

 

 

Some Notes: I read Daniel Quinn's book referenced in this one in August 1997. At the time it made a huge impact on me. I wanted everyone I knew to have read it.  Later, a friend or two had read the book and didn't have the same impact as myself. Not sure if it was the format or they just weren't prepared for what the author said.  A similar type book, or so it seemed when I read it was The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant. I read that book in February 2001.