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Utah writer and conservationist Brooke Williams will launch his new memoir, "Open Midnight: Where Ancestors and Wilderness Meet," on Thursday, March 2, at The King's English.
The book chronicles Williams' wanderings in southern Utah with his dog, Rio, as he works "ground-truthing" maps as a field advocate for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. On his trips, Williams becomes haunted, or maybe inspired, by the life story of a British ancestor, William Williams, who died in 1863 on the Mormon Trail, somewhere along Wyoming's Sweetwater River, while immigrating to Utah with his family.
After pondering the outlines of William Williams' life story, Brooke Williams says his lifelong quest to explore and protect the country's wilderness lands has changed. After what he refers to as "meeting" William Williams, the writer began exploring how "wilderness saves us."
Truth can come up from the ground for those who are still enough to listen, Williams says. "We can change the world," he says. "Everyone can. We're built that way, it's biology."
Barbara Ras, Williams' editor at Trinity Press, praises "the incredibly intricate arc between the different strands of Williams' story" in "Open Midnight." She hopes the book will launch a conversation about how connected people are, and can be, to wild places.
Williams' last book, edited with his wife, writer Terry Tempest Williams, was a Torrey House press reissue and response to British writer Richard Jeffries' 1883 autobiography, "The Story of My Heart."
When • Thursday, March 2, 7 p.m.
Where • The King's English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City
Tickets • Free