Lookout

WINNER OF THE ALBERTA LITERARY AWARD FOR MEMOIR

WINNER OF THE 2021 NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARDS IN THE OUTDOOR LITERATURE CATEGORY

FINALIST FOR THE ROBERT KROETSCH CITY OF EDMONTON BOOK PRIZE


“Moyles tells a totally engrossing story of fear and love, self-recrimination and healing, by turns vivid with memory and presence. Page after page, I felt immersed in the rejuvenating wonders of the natural world, rendered here in all their magnificent, everchanging detail. Reader, you will roar through this book.” ―Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe

“Trina Moyles has written a beautiful, closely observed love letter to the boreal forest and the wilderness of northern Canada at a time when it is threatened by unprecedented change. But Lookout is more than that: it’s also a powerful, unforgettable story about the ways that solitude in nature can break us down, and then put us back together again.” ―Eva Holland, author of Nerve: A Personal Journey Through the Science of Fear

“A vital and howling missive of a book. Lookout holds the wide wisdom and fierce beauty of the boreal forest it depicts. Trina Moyles has spent several seasons sitting in the fire, looking into the heat of love, death and regenerated life; experiencing solitude as intensifying tincture. She writes as a wild and erudite witness, bursting with hunger and feral passion for the living world.” —Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation

“Trina Moyles is a natural storyteller. As a novice fire lookout, she retreats into the bush, her heart and self-trust broken, and becomes the sort of woman who shoots a bear in the butt with a rubber bullet then bakes a peach cobbler, all while a record-breaking wildfire rages toward her. Lookout is courageous, vulnerable, funny and enthralling. Above all else, it imparts a much-needed message of hope and regeneration.” —Jan Redford, author of End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood

“With effortless prose, Trina Moyles proves herself a deft observer of both the fires in the distance, and the desires, dreams and doubts she holds close. Moyles’ voluntary solitude will make her readers somehow feel less alone. Lookout is a marvel.” —Marcello Di Cintio, author of Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary Palestine

“In her engrossing—at times raw—memoir, Moyles elegantly unfurls an unanticipated personal evolution. . . . [Lookout] can feel novelistic in its combination of evocative descriptions of jaw-dropping nature and Jack London-esque touches.” —The Globe and Mail

“Crossing between countries and seasons, navigating years and relationships, and venturing in and out of the vast Canadian boreal forest along a network of fire towers, Trina Moyles’ Lookout weaves together the story of one woman’s becoming. As she struggles to overcome PTSD and heartbreak and return to herself in the remote Alberta wilderness of her childhood, Moyles comes to realize that the journey to the fire tower is less a groundless flight and more a homecoming, both to the land and to herself. Far from a story of vanishing into the bush in order to disappear, Lookout chronicles Moyles’ emergent awareness of the profound links between those who strive to keep the forests and the surrounding towns and cities safe, and the vast ecosystems in which they work. It’s a wry, generous, and grounded narrative that shows how it’s possible to regenerate a sense of self after profound loss. Moyles, like her beloved boreal forest, rebounds with resilient grace.” —Jenna Butler, author of Revery: A Year of Bees and A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail