Salt Lakes

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”
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
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
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
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
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

Caroline Tracey holds a PhD in geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the recipient of the Waterston Desert Writing Prize and the Ira A. Lipman Fellowship, among other honors. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, New York Review of Books, Nation, and elsewhere. Originally from Colorado, she lives in Tucson, Arizona.

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