The Glorians - by Terry Tempest Williams (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"I go to Terry Tempest Williams for the reasons I go to Whitman and Thoreau: to recover a capacious spirit and to rejoin the urgent living world. She gives me something bigger than hope."―Richard Powers, author of The Overstory

From the visionary New York Times bestselling author, a revelatory work of narrative nonfiction exploring beauty in the desert, climate change, and, transformative moments of power in a world beset by uncertainty

Whether we believe it or not, rapid change is upon us. I am searching for grace.

In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking beauty wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences--animal, plant, memory, moment--that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. The Glorians can be as small as an ant ferrying a coyote willow blossom to its queen or as commonplace as the night sky. But what they can collectively show us--about the radical act of attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds--is immense.

Journeying through encounters with the Glorians in the red rock desert of Utah during the pandemic to Harvard University where she teaches in the Divinity School, Williams weaves a story of astonishing personal and societal insight. As she grapples with the unsettled state of the world, she turns not to despair but to deep reflection. She sees how the Glorians are calling us to attention, not as an army, but as fellow inhabitants of our sacred, threatened home. They remind us of the power of contact between species and the profound courage--and awareness--it will take to dream a more cohesive future into being.

Wise and lyrical, The Glorians is a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention. In a modern world filled with increasing noise and anxiety, Terry Tempest Williams offers honest sustenance for the mind and spirit and distinguishes herself again as a trusted voice to whom we can turn to more fully understand our times.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Glorians:

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times Book Review, Literary Hub, and Book Riot

Named a Book of the Month by The LA Times, Amazon, and Book Riot

"Beauty is all around us, or so the cliché goes. Williams, the environmental activist and Harvard Divinity School writer-in-residence, takes it a step further in these reflections on aging, relationships and more: Each ordinary little beauty is connected to each other, and to us."--New York Times Book Review, "The Nonfiction Everyone Will be Talking About in 2026"

"'The unsung moments that inspire our actions and beliefs arise often without words--a central drive to being human is to translate those experiences into shared stories that delight, disturb, and heighten our senses.' Here we see the process in which Williams engages throughout this idiosyncratic and deeply moving work."--David L. Ulin, Alta Journal

"There's nobody I trust more than Terry Tempest Williams to be able to braid the ordinary with the holy, the divine with the mundane. She's someone who I've always been able to look to, in the need of regaining a faith in the world, a trust in it . . . Williams points to small moments, and poignant visions, as the representations of our hope, our resilience, our bright and gleaming futures. I know I need that now, more than ever."--Literary Hub, "Most Anticipated Books of 2026"

"A Glorian, according to Williams--one of our finest writers on the natural world--is a 'moment of grace' when we humans connect deeply with our environment. Her essays include an elegy to her great friend and fellow writer Barry Lopez, a tribute to a beloved lost red oak on the grounds of Harvard Divinity School (where she teaches), and a meditation on having badgers as cemetery caretakers. After reading this, you'll look for more Glorians."--Bethanne Patrick, The Los Angeles Times

"That it is not one god but many, that they are not only within us but around us in forests and oceans and microcosms of moss, is what Terry Tempest Williams offers in The Glorians--vespers for a burning world, a rosary of stays against despair threaded with the insistence that 'wildness is the taproot of our consciousness' . . . Laced throughout the book is the lucid, luminous recognition that 'there must be something deeper than hope'--more prayerful, more purposeful, more pulsating with aliveness."--Maria Popova, The Marginalian

"Like Emerson, Williams has established herself as our nation's cartographer of the wild edges of consciousness, and in The Glorians, she turns her gaze toward the 'Holy Ordinary'--the small, often-overlooked encounters that anchor us when the world feels as though it is coming loose from its moorings . . . Without being trite or cliché, The Glorians succeeds in catching sight of the sublime and beautiful amid a people seemingly hell-bent on self-destruction."--John Kaag, American Scholar

"A frank, passionate, knowledgeable, observant, and entrancing writer of conscience . . . After telling poignant and funny stories, lamenting injustice and environmental destruction, and contemplating stars, storms, flash floods, plants, stones, spiders, monarchs, time, love, and resistance, Williams assures us in this exquisite, deeply affecting, spirit-renewing inquiry that 'we can dream a new world into being.'"--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred)

"In our current time of political turmoil, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. She describes them as 'ordinary, often overlooked presences--animal, plant, memory, moment--that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world.' This book is truly a masterclass in finding beauty and joy in the unexpected."--Book Riot

"Mary Oliver gave us instructions for living a life: 'Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.' Terry Tempest Williams understood the assignment. In her latest, Williams lifts up the 'Glorians, ' a word that came to her in a dream in March 2020 . . . Ravens, the glow of apricots, a cup of tea, friendship; all of these are Glorians, the 'holy ordinary, ' doorways from the natural world that offer us connection with something sacred and profound. Williams's work, too, is such a doorway, and it is always a pleasure to walk through."--Book Riot

"In The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams takes snapshots of the natural and human-made world, exposing time and again the miraculous elements of the mundane . . . The book is both a testament to and a model of bearing witness . . . A guide for how to live in today's tumultuous times."--BookPage

"An often-poetic invitation to softness and stillness in troubled times, this nature book is for readers seeking inspiration to reflect and take action."--Library Journal

"This revelatory mix of nature writing and memoir from conservationist Williams reflects on encounters, which she calls 'Glorians, ' that reveal the interconnectedness of the natural world . . . Evocative and richly personal, Williams's writing seamlessly weaves together meditations on mortality, nature, and the modern world. Readers will be inspired."--Publishers Weekly

"In chapters that range from brief meditations to longer narratives, Williams bears witness 'to beauty and brokenness, love and grief.' Marriage, friendship, dreams, ravaging fires, her aging father, the pandemic, all feature in deeply felt pieces . . . An impassioned defense of interconnectedness."--Kirkus Reviews

"The book models how to navigate your life by beauty, intuition, and commitment rather than logic and obedience and that is a quiet--as quiet as a desert day in the windless hush before the thunderstorm breaks--rebellion and maybe the revolution we need . . . It is not always about politics, but it doesn't shy away from them, either. Most of all for me the refusal to separate, to say that that global politics and dreams and sensual encounters, the smallest firsthand experience and the largest climate issue belong together. In that the book is an invitation and a manifesto."--Rebecca Solnit, New York Times bestselling author of The Beginning Comes After the End

"With The Glorians, Terry Tempest Williams has secured her place as one of our greatest living eco-visionaries. This book is the culmination and crescendo of the devotional work of a lifetime--deeply wise, poetic, necessary, brave, transporting, and transcendent."--V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of Reckoning and The Vagina Monologues

"Williams is Whitmanesque in her vision: generous, visionary, multitudinous. This is a wise, tender, and often very funny book that asks us to achieve new ways of seeing. A glorian is a revelation made flesh and rock and fire and desire. Give me a Terry Tempest Williams world any day: it lights up the very edges of the dark."--Colum McCann, author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin

"Feeling her way along the edges of the world's sorrows, Terry Tempest Williams touches the glory of the earth and its creatures and the grandeur of our capacity to grieve, resist and create. A book that invites dreaming about new ways of living. A vision for a future with hope."--Stephanie Paulsell, Susan Shallcross Swartz Professor of the Practice of Christian Studies, Emerita, Harvard Divinity School

Praise for Erosion:

"If Williams's haunting, powerful and brave book can be summed up in one line of advice it would be this: try to stare down the grief of everyday life, speak out and find solace in the boundless beauty of nature."--New York Times Book Review

"If you're reading Terry Tempest Williams for the first time, you are meeting an impassioned conservationist who can take her place in the environmental pantheon alongside Rachel Carson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Rebecca Solnit . . . A talented writer who fuses soul to scholarship."--Washington Independent Review of Books

Praise for The Hour of Land:

"The Hour of Land is one of the best nature books I've read in years, filled with seductive prose . . . It's impossible to do Williams's thought-provoking insights and evocative images justice in a short review. My only advice is to read the book. And then read it again, with pen in hand. And then visit a national park, because as Williams reminds us, they are 'portals and thresholds of wonder, ' the 'breathing spaces for a society that increasingly holds its breath.'"--New York Times Book Review

"Whether contemplating the spiritual life she finds 'inside the heart of the wild' or marveling at the peaks and monuments that comprise 'our best idea' - the National Parks system - Williams movingly urges us to remember that 'heaven is here.'" ―O Magazine

Praise for When Women Were Birds:

"Williams displays a Whitmanesque embrace of the world and its contradictions . . . As the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria."--San Francisco Chronicle

"This poetic memoir continues the work Williams began in Refuge . . . Williams explores her mother's identity - woman, wife, mother, and Mormon - as she continues to honor her memory . . . A lyrical and elliptical meditation on women, nature, family, and history."--Boston Globe

Praise for Refuge:

"There has never been a book like Refuge, an entirely original yet tragically common story, brought exquisitely to life."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Moving and loving . . . both a natural history of an ecological phenomenon [and] a Mormon family saga . . . A heroic book."--The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of over twenty books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Red; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; The Hour of Land; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Southeastern Utah.