Miracle Country

A Memoir

By: Kendra Atleework

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero.

Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.

When Kendra was six, her mother was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, and she died when Kendra was 16. Her family fell apart, even as her father tried to keep them together. Kendra took flight from her bereft family, escaping to the enemy city of Los Angeles, and then Minneapolis, land of all trees, no deserts, no droughts, full lakes, water everywhere you look.

But after years of avoiding the pain of her hometown, she realized that she had to go back, that the desert was the only place she could live.

Like Wild, Miracle Country is a story of flight and return, bounty and emptiness, and the true meaning of home. But it also speaks to the ravages of climate change and its permanent destruction of the way of life in one particular town.

©2020 Kendra Atleework (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A reminder of why we love this place

A beautifully heartfelt, vivid and well written memoir. If you are a Valley Local, exceptional!

how the water supply was stolen from Owen’s Valley and it changed everything about life there.

it was adjective overload in too many sentences to get to the point
loved the overall story of the changes in this family

Someone I’d love to talk and hike with!

Miracle Country is a fantastic read both as memoir and environmental education. The author’s portrait of family felt so familiar in its gritty honesty through good times and hard times. Through the ebb and flow of relationship, their bond with each other remains strong due in part to the acceptance of very different life choices. The history of the Owens Valley was a real eye opener. I live 150 or so miles north of Bishop in the same topography - high desert along the Sierra rising abruptly to 10,000’ at my back door. What sticks with me most is our disregard for the natural state of this land in our profligate use of water. This is not rain forest but rain shadow here yet we use it as if it’s in never ending supply. The author’s depiction of the multi- year drought we’re experiencing and the misuse of natural resources is both clear and alarming. Her sense of home and place in our transient culture is encouraging and revives my own. Thank you, Kendra, for this wonderful book!
Note to narrator: It’s not Ne-vah-da...!😉

The best book I’ve read in a long time

History, poetic writing and a sorrow to leave behind when I finished it
.It will be difficult to find an equal for my next reading )s)

Complicated, Beautiful

This book is a thoughtful telling of the author’s personal relationship with the Owen’s Valley as well the relationship this place has with its past inhabitants and the City of Los Angeles. I enjoyed the intertwining of past and present, personal stories and historical ones. I appreciate the time put into researching the history of her subjects and the juxtaposition they play in her own life’s story.