Another Eve

"Urgent, gutsy, and lyrical, Another Eve is at once a love song, a celebration of the wild Oregon coast, and the story of a woman's passage out of her Mormon upbringing and into the hard-won daylight of queer selfhood. In this exquisite memoir, Elissa Minor finds a way to acknowledge all the forces—human, animal, geologic—that have shaped not only her life, but the landscape and culture of the Pacific Northwest. She has woven a complex tapestry of threads both bleak and bright, fragile and strong, and from it emerges a true celebration of the mysteries of the wild—in every sense." —Marjorie Sandor, author of The Late Interiors: A Life Under Construction

"The literary traditions of the American West have long been built on acts of mapping meant to exert dominion over the land and the people who live there. But what happens when topography becomes about mutual freedom rather than control? Lyrical and humble, Elissa Minor's Another Eve presents an against-all-odds love story—both a queer romance and the redemptive love the author finds for herself—where the high deserts and wet coasts of the West are sites of ongoing transformation and hope. Told with the confidence of a writer who doesn't feel the need to move linearly through life or on the page, Minor's memoir is a sweeping examination of family secrets, religious fear, carnal desire, and one woman's searing search for the self-knowing grace and forgiveness we all deserve." —Keetje Kuipers, editor of Poetry Northwest

"In this gorgeous eco-memoir about purity culture, motherhood, and queer awakening, Minor maps out how shame settles into the body, and how the natural world can loosen its grip. Written with salt water and fire, Another Eve offers us a wilder, truer gospel." —Greg Wrenn, author of Mothership: A Memoir of Wonder and Crisis