Minnesota Book Award Winner

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In August of 2001, Kaethe Schwehn needed her own, personal Eden. She was a twenty-two-year-old trying to come to terms with a failed romance, the dissolution of her parents' marriage, and her own floundering faith. At first, Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center nestled in the Cascade Mountains, seemed like a utopian locale: communal meals, consensus decision-making, and eco-friendly practices. But as the months wore on, the idyll faded and Kaethe was left with 354 inches of snow, one prowling cougar, sixty-five disgruntled villagers, and a pile of copper mine tailings 150 feet high. Her Eden was a toxic Superfund site. How do we navigate the space between who we are and who we would like to become, between the world as it is and world as we imagine it could be? Tailings is a lyrical memoir of intentional community told from the front lines, a passionate and awkward journey about embracing the "in-between" times of our lives with grace and hope.

PRAISE

“It is not easy to write fluidly of earnestness. Nor is it simple to lend a real radiance to depictions of epiphanies…But thanks to her command of language and her well-placed use of imagery, Schwehn nudges the reader into the physical as well as contemplative experience…Wisely, she does not inflate the significance of her own quest. These elements endow this memoir with grace itself — and that is the achievement and appeal of this remarkably absorbing tale.”  --Rosemary Herbert, Star Tribune

“[Schwehn’s] deep diving into time and surfacing into the present reality helps readers appreciate what is essentially a coming-of-age story but with its own twists… Kaethe Schwehn has mined every vein of her younger self, and she has emerged as a writer of great promise.”  — Shirley Showalter, Christian Century

"Kaethe Schwehn's poignant memoir explores longing, both spiritual and physical, community and faith, in prose that is calm, lovely, and filled with clear-eyed honesty and grace. Tailings is simply an exquisite book." --Dinty W. Moore, author of The Mindful Writer 

"Schwehn's Tailings, is, like all of my favorite contemporary nonfiction, uncategorizable--part memoir, part spiritual reflection, part reportage. Brilliant in all of its guises, Tailings only makes me want to read more by Kaethe Schwehn. She writes with fierce intelligence and luminous clarity on all of her subjects: loss, grace, this very particular village, and the hard work of renewal. Tailings is a beautiful and original book by a remarkable writer." --Rene Steinke, author of Friendswood "

"Already by the second chapter, this is a book hard to lay aside. Schwehn's prose is liquid and intelligent. It catches your interest immediately and swings you from paragraph to paragraph and chapter to chapter. Her observations never stand still but sweep you forward into her story/memoir. She is a genuine artist."" --Walter Wangerin Jr., author of Ragman--and Other Cries of Faith