Half-Light

Westbound on a Hot Planet

Amy Kaler

• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781772127607
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to "go west," Amy Kaler offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. She explores "ruins" of the human history of the North American settler west—faded hamlets, bunkers, fields of cars, bends in the river—that serve as emblems of hope, generational commitment abandoned by contemporary heirs, faith, hubris, even carelessness. These stops are intertwined with reflections on aging, temporality, and change, making the book feel like a deeply satisfying road trip with a thoughtful friend. Moving from meditative to ardent to sobering in compelling and measured ways, Half-Light shimmers with urgency and suggestion.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Prologue
• Central Alberta, Somewhere Near Rumsey
• Westbound
• Retlaw
• On Fire for the Rest of My Life
• Rossdale Flats and the Bomb Shelter
• The West and Its Ruins
• Swan Hills
• Westbound All Along
• Campus Saint-Jean
• The End of the World and the Ends of the Earth
• Dalum
• Orphans
• St. Paul
• My Seventies
• Strathcona Science Park
• The Years Before Me, the Years Behind
• Newbrook
• Ancestors and Descendants
• Wostok and Spaca Moskalyk
• Home for the Time Being
• Packingtown
• The Most Important Things Have Already Happened
• Holy Transfiguration
• Standing Pose
• Rowley
• “Your Cell Will Teach You”
• Newcastle Mine
• Time Management
• Abbotsford
• Keeping Time
• Rochfort Bridge
• Pigeons
• Palliser Triangle
• Who Is That?
• Bunchberry Meadows
• Top Ten Crises
• Beaverhill Lake
• Epilogue: Eastbound
• Acknowledgements
• References
• About the Author