John Gatta's new book is a thoughtful and learned exposition of the power of place and setting in American literature, by a critic and scholar at the height of his own powers. In his wonderful and reader-friendly accounts of writers with an intense imaginative focus on nature and setting, Gatta's analysis presents the multiple meanings of sacred space in American culture. I highly recommend this volume to all readers interested in the beauty and wonder evoked by
great poems, stories, memoirs, and even such cultural sites as monuments, battlegrounds, and burial sites.
John Gatta is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English at Sewanee: The University of the South. He is the author of Making Nature Sacred (OUP 2004) and numerous other publications concerned with American literature and the interplay between religion and literature.