A memoir from an award-winning poet who ventures into the wilderness to seek answers to life's big questions and finds her way back after losing everything she thought she needed
In her new memoir, Rough Beauty, the award-winning poet recounts her struggle to rebuild her life after a devastating fire left her with nothing but the opportunity to begin again ... In the opening pages, Auvinen recounts the experience from years before, the day she drove her truck up a mountain road in the Colorado Rockies, her beloved dog Elvis riding shotgun beside her. That warm glow of a fire that she spotted up ahead – it was coming from her isolated mountain cabin. Rather than cozy and inviting, this fire was destroying her life. It had ravaged her home, consumed her belongings, and obliterated all traces of her daily life ... Fighting back against the grief, Auvinen confronted her choices. With no physical remnants of her life, she realized she could easily disappear. Or, she could craft a new life. Ever the fighter, she started over. But this time, as if tempered by the fire, Auvinen surrendered to those powers beyond herself – the rhythm of nature, the change of seasons, the simple kindnesses expressed by those around her ... Hers is a voice not found often enough in literature – a woman who eschews the prescribed role outlined for her by her family and discovers her own path. Refined by the fires of her experiences, Auvinen discovers her authentic self.
What drew me to Karen Auvinen’s Rough Beauty was not interest in a change of pace from my usual reading fare. You see, Auvinen is a writer, like me. And so I selfishly figured that in reading her memoir ... The title is, without an iota of a doubt, the perfect way to describe her writing: gorgeously and carefully rendered, yet brimming with a sort of wildness that can’t be entirely tamed. This two-sidedness pervades everything in Auvinen’s life: her father, at once charming and volatile; the Colorado mountain setting, as awe-inspiring as it is perilous; her connections with others, often tense but always essential ... however some sections dragged on a little too long for my taste; whether or not that has to do with me not being accustomed to memoirs, I cannot say. For the most part, the way she splits things up keeps the book from becoming monotonous, but I can’t help but feel that Auvinen never escapes a certain repetitiveness...but her words are laced with wisdom - not the preachy kind, thankfully, but the hard-won kind that prompts you to reconsider your own surroundings as Auvinen considers hers ...
The fire ravaged Auvinen’s mountain cabin, leaving only a few charred remnants of her carefully crafted life behind. Rebuilding required her both to let go and to let others in, putting aside her hard-won independence to rely on the kindness of others in her tight-knit Colorado community.
