From the Aral Sea to the Great Salt Lake, Tracey takes the reader on a personal and geographical tour of some of the most uncanny and unknown parts of our world.—New York Times
Writing about the lakes she knows well, Tracey opens up fresh perspectives. . . . She is a sincere and scrupulous guide, persuasive in her argument. . . . Tracey is alert to complexity in nature and emphasizes that saving the salt lakes does not mean restoring them to a pristine state.—Rosa Lyster, New York Review of Books
An eclectic book asks how humans have shaped these ‘queer’ landscapes and how they can be restored.—Josie Glausiusz, Nature
A tender bildungsroman. . . . holds human emotion and ecological destruction at once. . . . Tracey [has] remarkable talent and erudition.”—Kyle Paoletta, Baffler
Caroline Tracey exquisitely weaves queer beauty into a narrative that is also largely about the death of the ecosystems around salt lakes. . . . The author’s very personal connection to the lakes creates an intimacy that I find unexpected from how I usually think of science writing. . . And while Salt Lakes doesn’t turn away from the dread of climate change, it does, like the wildflowers in Death Valley, offer something queer, radical in our collective moment: hope.
—August Owens Grimm, Hippocampus Magazine
A call to protect marginal places and ways of life [that] resonates deeply.—Kirkus Reviews
A moving chronicle of the decline of salt lakes and [a] journey to finding queer love in a world ridden with ecological crises. . . .Vivid and tender, this is a powerful work of queer ecology.—Publishers Weekly
Caroline Tracey shows us the beauty, vitality, and necessity of landscapes both strange and familiar. This is nature writing as it should be.—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
Precise, lyrical, and at once deeply personal and epic, Salt Lakes brims with brine shrimp and birds and charismatic bacteria—and an unexpected sense of life pushing through against the odds. I was gripped from the first page to the last.
—Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
Caroline Tracey explores the mysteries and beauty of salt lakes. . . Queer ecology points [her] toward a life that defies reproductive binaries, to places in between what’s deemed natural and what’s not.—Robert Sullivan, New York Times Book Review
Salt Lakes is a perceptive, poetic ode to one of our planet’s most vital, and most overlooked, ecosystems. Caroline Tracey plumbs law, science, and literature in a debut as gorgeous and vibrant as the lakes she loves.
—Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet
A stunning illumination of a peculiar landscape, from a writer fueled by devotion, curiosity, and rapture. Caroline Tracey deftly demonstrates the human impact on fragile ecosystems, and what these ecosystems can reveal to us about ourselves. Salt Lakes made me feel a deeper kinship with the world.
—Lauren Markham, author of A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
Salt Lakes is not just a book of nature writing, not just a memoir, but like the salt lakes themselves, something much more wondrous and precious. Caroline Tracey leads readers through her growing understanding of herself and the strange beauty of the ecosystems around her, and along the way reminds us of the abundance and possibilities inherent in queer lives and landscapes.
—Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration
Strange, overlooked, and unloved places find a voice in Salt Lakes, a brave and openhearted book. Caroline Tracey shows the world’s salt lakes as real places worthy of protection, but also as mirrors reflecting human history, identity, and desire.
—Melissa L. Sevigny, author of Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
