Pilgrim at Tinker Creek - by Annie Dillard (Paperback)

About the Book

In the book which won her a Pulitzer Prize in 1975, Dillard writes in the form of a journal, trying to understand God by chronicling the seasons along Tinker Creek in Virginias Blue Ridge Mountains, and by exploring the paradoxical coexistence of beauty and violence.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"The book is a form of meditation, written with headlong urgency, about seeing. . . . There is an ambition about [Dillard's] book that I like. . . . It is the ambition to feel." -- Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

From the Back Cover

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley. Annie Dillard sets out to see what she can see. What she sees are astonishing incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence."

Her personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, Dillard stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope. She unties a snake skin, witnesses a flood, and plays King of the Meadow with a field of grasshoppers. The result is an exhilarating tale of nature and its seasons.

Review Quotes

"A remarkable psalm of terror and celebration." - Time magazine
"This book of wonder is one of the most truly beautiful books of this or any season. . . . A triumph." - Publishers Weekly
"Spirited and gale-force. . . . The best thing is her glee, a pied-piperish glee at being in the world, which she invokes better than anyone else." - The Guardian
"One of the most distinctive voices in American letters today." - Boston Globe
"With Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, we suddenly find ourselves in the presence of an ecstatic and visionary genius. We are still there." - Geoff Dyer