MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksFor all the loveliness of the agricultural and literary practices Chaskey surveys, Soil and Spirit sometimes risks appropriating the sentimental aesthetics of the places he visits. In this, Chaskey risks missing the political and cultural nuances constituent to a local and specific sense of place ... Despite its nods to Indigenous environmental efforts, the reflexes of Soil and Spirit feel steeped in the settler colonial rhetoric that pervades the history and literature of American environmentalism ... This may seem like a harsh assessment, but part of why this harshness seems so necessary is that there is much to love in Chaskey’s pages. His journeys and meditations are emblematic of an entire era of American environmentalism ... In the face of Anthropocene suffering, Soil and Spirit allows us to imagine solace and interconnectedness between nature, the people of the world, and the past.
