How does one recover from disaster? That question is at the heart of Marybeth Holleman s lyrical, elegiac response to the repercussions of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which devastated Alaska s Prince William Sound in 1989. Intertwining the destruction of an ecosystem, the disintegration of her marriage, and her emerging identity as a new mother, Holleman explores the resiliency of nature both wild and human and the ways in which that resiliency is tested.While much of nature writing is about the search for an unspoiled landscape, The Heart of the Sound is about what happens when...