Far Flung

Award-Winning Finalist for Non-Fiction Narrative in the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest

Cassandra Kircher was in her twenties when she was hired by the National Park Service, landing a life that allowed her to reinvent herself. For four years she collected entrance fees and worked in the dispatch office before being assigned as the first woman to patrol an isolated backcountry district of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. There, Kircher encountered wonder and beauty, accidents and death. Although she always suspected the mountains might captivate her, she didn’t realize that her adopted landscape would give her strength to confront where she was from—both the Midwest that Willa Cather fans will recognize, and a childhood filled with problems and secrets.

Divided and defined by geographic and psychological space, Far Flung begins in the Rockies but broadens its focus as Kircher negotiates places as distant as Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, Russia’s Siberian valleys, and Wisconsin’s lake country, always with Colorado as a heartfelt pivot. These thirteen essays depict a woman coming to terms with her adoration for the wilds of the West and will resonate with all of us longing to better understand ourselves and our relationships to the places and people we love most.

PRAISE FOR FAR FLUNG

"Kircher’s book is no easy roam through feel-good girl-power woods narratives. She traverses complicated terrain: a wounded family, the limits of her own empowerment, and the complexities of human adventuring."
"This bold, jaunty narrative travels to the expected places and tangos with unanticipated obsessions. I can easily imagine Kircher's book shelved alongside contemporary place-based work by Ana Maria Spagna, Blair Braverman, and Cheryl Strayed."​
Elena Passarello
Author of "Animals Strike Curious Poses"
"In a voice as clear and compelling as a tumbling mountain stream, Cassandra Kircher writes of family, landscape, and the deep and sometimes mystical ways in which we are bound to the land and bound to each other. The book is an intimate, meditative journey into the human heart, with no shortage of adventures along the way."
Kristen Iversen
Author of "Full Body Burden..."
"Intimate and moving essays on nature, family, and adventure in the wilds."

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