cover image HANNAH AND THE MOUNTAIN: Notes Toward a Wilderness Fatherhood

HANNAH AND THE MOUNTAIN: Notes Toward a Wilderness Fatherhood

Jonathan Johnson, . . Univ. of Nebraska, $22 (225pp) ISBN 978-0-8032-2601-2

A couple seeks life's deeper meaning in a return to the land—"a place that would keep us young and free and filled with passion"—and faces both hardship and joy. It's a familiar American story these days, but Johnson tells it with compassion and grace, focusing in particular on his wife Amy's pregnancy and their preparations to bring a baby into their wilderness world. Amy and the author must refurbish their cabin, which is situated on his family's Idaho land; they worry about money; they debate about where Amy will give birth. But the narrative takes a wrenching turn when they learn that Amy is unlikely to carry the fetus to term. The desperate measures the author once took to save a winter-born calf poignantly resonate with the couple's ultimately futile attempts to bring their baby, Hannah, to term. A later pregnancy ends in miscarriage. These sorrows can make for grim material, and readers expecting lots of lovely nature writing will be disappointed, but Johnson is an elegant, emotive narrator; as the couple's story of healing progresses, one will sense that happiness (and a baby) will find these two eventually. (Mar.)