"Story," Terry Tempest Williams said in a 1997 interview, "bypasses rhetoric and pierces the heart." As a nationally recognized environmentalist, feminist, and spokesperson for the American West, Williams eschews traditional political rhetoric and relies instead on the power of story to bring about social change. Human beings, she asserts, have lost the vital connections that bind them to the natural landscape and to each other. The consequence is a spiritual famine that cannot be satisfied by the quest for material possessions or worldly power. Williams believes that society must find a way to rekindle the notion of community, which, for her, includes all life-forms. By reaching the hearts of her readers through her passionate and lyrical prose, she hopes to help "heal the fragmentation and divisions that separate us from nature, that separate us from ourselves, that separate us from God or the mysteries."

Williams was born Terry Lynn...