Annie Dillard’s 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning work about the year she spent living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia as a young woman in her twenties is voiced by Tavia Gilbert. She provides the proper measure of youthful enthusiasm and wide-eyed wonder at both the grandest and the most minute details of the natural world. As the author combines descriptive imagery and quirky observation with personal anecdotes, Gilbert channels her intense focus on detail with precision. The work itself is contemplative. Although poetic, it has a meandering quality in the audio format that may allow the listener’s mind to wander.—AudioFile Magazine