Review from Debra Gwartney

Anne-Marie Oomen’s full-hearted essays in An American Map remind us that to be rooted in place is also to be rooted in tenderness and compassion toward humanity. Her beautiful language and elegant images lead us to a clarified sense of our yearning to belong—to a people and to a place. It’s very satisfying to go along as she moves through landscapes that feed her, from the mist-drenched mountains of Puerto Rico to the urban precincts of New York and back to her own home in northern Michigan, and to go along with her as she fervently embraces her own family relationships and confronts her fears about human fate.

— Debra Gwartney, author of Live Through This and co-editor, with Barry Lopez, of Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape