Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Rough Beauty
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://karenauvinen.com/
CITY:
STATE: CO
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: ns2018001426
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/ns2018001426
HEADING: Auvinen, Karen
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670 __ |a Rough beauty, 2018: |b title page (Karen Auvinen) Inside back cover flap (Karen Auvinen is a poet, mountain woman, lifelong Westerner and writer… Karen is the winner of two Academy of American Poets Awards and her fiction has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes… She lives in Colorado … teaches film, pop culture, and storytelling at the University of Colorado-Boulder)
PERSONAL
Partner of Greg Marquez (an artist).
EDUCATION:University of Colorado, B.A., M.A.; University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, poet, and educator. University of Colorado-Boulder, Libby RAP instructor, 2004–. Previously writer-in-Residence for the State of Colorado, editor, book-buyer, rural postal route driver, caterer, clinic assistant, landscaper, summer camp director, and guest chef.
AWARDS:Academy of American Poets Award (two); Pushcart Prize nomination (two); Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Imagination Award; Jentel residency.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and websites, including the New York Times, the Columbia Review, Ascent, the Cold Mountain Review, and Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour.
SIDELIGHTS
Writer and poet Karen Auvinen earned a master’s degree in poetry and her doctorate in fiction writing. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, Auvinen is author of the memoir Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living. In a series of autobiographical essays, Auvinen “explore[s] solitude, traumatic events, and a deep commitment to place,” as noted by a Kirkus Reviews contributor. In the book’s prologue, Auvinen writes of how a fire destroyed her home on the Colorado Front Range in the Rocky Mountains, about fifty minutes from the college town of Boulder. She lost all of her belongings, including all of her writings stored on her computer.
Writing in the prologue to Rough Beauty, Auvinen notes: “At first, in the months after I watched my cabin burn, the hard prayer was for survival. Let me live. Only later, after I had retreated further, becoming intimate with rocks and stars, letting landscape cover me, would I see that it was also my return.”
Nearly forty years old, Auvinen moved to a rustic cabin in an isolated mountain community in Colorado after the fire destroyed her home and work. Living in the community, about 4 miles outside the town of Jamestown, Colorado, Auvinen writes that she found a new type of comfort. Along with her faithful dog, Elvis, Auvinen feels a experiences a new sense freedom, not having to worry about money or the encumbrance of owning and caring for many things. Much of the book revolves around Auvinen watching the passing seasons and mountain nature along with Elvis by her side. Avignon writes: “Elvis had long been my eyes, my ears, but now I realized he was also my guru, my guide: His presence reminded me to play now, sleep now, explore now, be now.” Christian Science Monitor Online contributor Joan Gaylord remarked: “In a narrative that reads like a captivating novel, Auvinen’s tale covers the next ten years of her life. She marks time, not by years, but by the changing seasons.”
Auvinen makes a living by running a rural postal route and teaching at a community college. She also cooks once a week at a Jamestown cafe, which represents its only business. Auvinen quickly realizes how close the Jamestown community is as friends help her shop for clothing and supplies and people on her postal route leave her cash in envelopes. A benefit was also held for her. Nevertheless, Auvinen has difficulty with the kind acts and attention she is receiving, writing that she is “more uneasy with condolences and well wishes than I would have been with condemnation and blame.”
Auvinen also writes about her childhood. “It’s the stories she tells of her childhood and her teenage years that are most affecting; without seeming melodramatic, they have a real sense of poignancy and immediacy,” wrote Brevity website reviewer Tucker Coombe. Auvinen reveals that as a kid she was independent and irreverent, unlike the other women in her family. This aspect of her personality would lead to alienation from her father, who was an Air Force career soldier.
Auvinen reveals that her father was a mini tyrant who harshly ruled over the family and occasionally slipped into violence. A major turning point in their relationship was when her father made the decision to move the family to Hawaii and euthanize the family dog rather than take the dog with them. Auvinen details how she witnessed her father trying to fit the still living dog into a small box that would serve as its burial box and the horror that she felt as the dog wailed in grief. With a strong will, Auvinen began a campaign to fight against the bully she realized her father was, eventually changing her last name before she started graduate school. The contentious relationship between the two would result in father and daughter not speaking to each other for a decade.
“Tender and sincere, Rough Beauty is a lovely tribute to inner strength,” wrote Bridget Thoreson in Booklist. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted: Rough Beauty “honors the wildness of the Rockies and shows readers how they might come to rely on their animal companions.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Auvinen, Karen, Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, Scribner (New York, NY), 2018.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2018, Bridget Thoreson, review of Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, p. 17.
BookPage, June, 2018. Sarah Mccraw Crow, review of Rough Beauty, p. 25.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2018, review of Rough Beauty.
Publishers Weekly, April 30, 2018, review of Rough Beauty, p. 56.
ONLINE
Brevity, http://brevitymag.com/ (July 13, 2018),Tucker Coombe, review of Rough Beauty.
Christian Science Monitor, https://www.csmonitor.com/ (June 22, 2018), Joan Gaylord, “Rough Beauty Recounts a Poet’s Journey from Self-Reliance to Community Living.”
Karen Auvinen website, https://karenauvinen.com (July 29, 2018).
University of Colorado Boulder, https://www.colorado.edu/ (July 28, 2018), author faculty profile.
About Karen
Karen Auvinen is poet, mountain woman, life-long westerner, writer, and the author of the memoir Rough Beauty, forthcoming from Scribner in 2018.
Her body of work traverses the intersection of landscape and place, and examines what it means to live deeply and voluptuously, and has appeared in The New York Times, The Columbia Review, Ascent, The Cold Mountain Review, and Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, among others. Awards include two Pushcart Prize nominations, a Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Imagination Award, two Academy of American Poets Awards, and a Jentel residency.
She earned an MA in poetry from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D in fiction from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and presently teaches film and media studies to freshman at the University of Colorado – Boulder.
Past gigs include Writer-in-Residence for the State of Colorado, editor, book-buyer, rural postal route driver, caterer, clinic assistant, landscaper, summer camp director, and guest chef. She lives in Colorado with the artist Greg Marquez (www.artquez.com), their dog River, and Dottie the Cat.
Follow me on Twitter @karenjamestown or Instagram @Karen_Jamestown and on Facebook: KarenAuvinenAuthor
Photo Credit: Virginia Moore
Karen Auvinen is a poet, mountain woman, dog lover, lifelong westerner and writer. Her body of work traverses the intersections of landscape and place, examining what it means to live deeply and voluptuously, and has appeared in the New York Times, Real Simple, LitHub and numerous literary journals. Karen is the winner of two Academy of American Poets Awards and her fiction has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She earned her MA in Poetry from the University of Colorado, under the mentorship of Lucia Berlin, and her PhD in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Past gigs include storyteller, editor, book buyer, rural postal route driver, caterer, clinic assistant, landscaper, summer camp director and guest chef. She lives in Colorado with the artist Greg Marquez, their dog River and Dottie the Cat, and teaches at the University of Colorado-Boulder. More at karenauvinen.com or on her blog: rougherbeauty.com
Karen Auvinen, Phd.
Karen Auvinen
Libby RAP Instructor
Karen.Auvinen@colorado.edu
BA and MA, University of Colorado Boulder
PhD, English, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Dr. Karen Auvinen has taught at CU Boulder since 2004 and currently teaches Film, Popular Culture and Storytelling for Libby RAP where she co-lead Libby’s annual New York Arts Adventure for five years. She earned her PhD in English Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and her MA in poetry from the University of Colorado - Boulder. Karen’s writing has appeared in The New York Times and her fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poems have won two Academy of American Poet Awards. Her interests include film and cultural studies, gender and ethnic studies, as well as The American West, creative writing and community building involving the arts. Her memoir: Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living will be published in 2018 (Scribner). More at karenauvinen.com and on her blog: rougherbeauty.com
quotes from book
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Print Marked Items
Auvinen, Karen: ROUGH BEAUTY
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Auvinen, Karen ROUGH BEAUTY Scribner (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 6, 5 ISBN: 978-1-5011-5228-3
These outstanding autobiographical essays explore solitude, traumatic events, and a deep commitment to
place.
Auvinen (Film/Univ. of Colorado Boulder), former Colorado artist-in-residence and two-time Academy of
American Poets award recipient, charts a decade of life "ordered by weather and wildlife" on the Front
Range of the Rockies. She prized her independence, funding her writing with three part-time jobs and
finding companionship in her husky mix, Elvis. But when her cabin burned down, destroying all her work
in progress, she had to accept help and discovered that her small town was a true community. After the fire's
climactic prologue, the book gracefully fills in events either side: her early years and how she rebuilt her
life. Growing up, Auvinen felt oppressed by Catholic doctrine and her Air Force father's slaps. She gives
excellent pithy descriptions of her family dynamics: "In my family, women were parsley on the plate--
accessories"; "Men did things, women watched." When her parents' marriage ended, she and her mother and
sister banded together; she even took her mother's maiden name in a power play that alienated male
relatives. In the post-fire years, her mother's health problems were a major concern, as was Elvis' decline
into old age. Anyone who has ever cherished and lost a pet will agree with her that this kind of love "is no
small thing." The turning seasons ("March was thick with anticipation--the pendulum between winter and
spring") and rhythms of small-town life form a meditative backdrop. Nature--whether gardening, camping,
or close encounters with bears and a fox--speaks of wonder and solace. Toward the close, Auvinen writes of
diving into a relationship with artist Greg Marquez, the book's illustrator, and a place enjoyed in solitude
became one freely shared. The author has served a long apprenticeship--sensing life's patterns, becoming
embedded in a human community, learning to give and receive love--and the result is a beautiful story of
resilience perfect for readers of Terry Tempest Williams.
A fine example of the hybrid nature-memoir.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Auvinen, Karen: ROUGH BEAUTY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532700320/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=eb2d4139.
Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532700320
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ROUGH BEAUTY
Sarah Mccraw Crow
BookPage.
(June 2018): p25+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
ROUGH BEAUTY
By Karen Auvinen
Scribner $27, 320 pages ISBN 9781501152283 Audio, eBook available
Poet Karen Auvinen's memoir, Rough Beauty, opens on a beautiful March morning, when Auvinen, out
delivering the mail on her rural Colorado route, notices the deep blue of the sky, the signs of early spring
and smoke from a fire--a fire that turns out to be her own house burning. She'd recently settled outside the
Rocky Mountain town of Jamestown, but now, Auvinen can only watch as firefighters work to contain the
fire, which destroys everything she owns.
Auvinen then drops back to detail her difficult adolescence: an abusive dad, an impassive mom, a
peripatetic childhood. But she dispatches with her youth quickly, focusing instead on the years that followed
the devastating fire and describing life at the edge of the wilderness. "Up on the mountain, summer was
easy," she writes. "The world was green and glorious. Aspens clacked in the breeze and hummingbirds
whirred across meadows gone crazy with wildflowers. Mornings dawned open and wide blue, but by noon,
the sky blackened and thunder rumbled."
As she describes her patchwork of jobs, her friends and a relationship gone bad, Auvinen paints a picture of
quirky Jamestown, home to 300. She works part-time as a cook at Jamestown's Mercantile Cafe and tries to
help her aging mother, who has begun a slow decline. Auvinen isn't afraid to show her own prickly
character or her loneliness. But the heart of this memoir is her relationship with her rescue dog, Elvis, a
Husky mix with a penchant for wandering. As Elvis nears the end of his life, Auvinen finds a new (human)
relationship and her own happy ending.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Crow, Sarah Mccraw. "ROUGH BEAUTY." BookPage, June 2018, p. 25+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540052020/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6606ecb1.
Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540052020
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Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of
Mountain Living
Bridget Thoreson
Booklist.
114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p17.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living.
By Karen Auvinen.
June 2018. 320p. Scribner, $27 (9781501152283). 917.8.
The fire ravaged Auvinen's mountain cabin, leaving only a few charred remnants of her carefully crafted
life behind. Rebuilding required her both to let go and to let others in, putting aside her hard-won
independence to rely on the kindness of others in her tight-knit Colorado community. Her moving memoir
recounts the process--from her mother's illness through the loss of her beloved dog, Elvis, and even to a
new romance--through which Auvinen comes to terms with the limits of her control and endurance. She
moves into a wood cabin with a coal stove, barely knocked into livable condition from the shack it once
was. Working three part-time jobs, she begins to leave the fringes of the towns social life with a plunge into
its arts scene. Along the way, she portrays the passing seasons with a keen eye and poetic admiration. In her
skilled words, an encounter with a bear becomes a profound moment to treasure, and the loneliness of
winter, with its anticipation of spring, is rendered both beautiful and desolate. Tender and sincere, Rough
Beauty is a lovely tribute to inner strength.--Bridget Thoreson
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Thoreson, Bridget. "Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 17.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268031/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4d1006cf. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268031
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Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of
Mountain Living
Publishers Weekly.
265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p56.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living
Karen Auvinen. Scribner, $27 (320p) ISBN 9781-5011-5228-3
"In the days after I'd watched my house burn, a great weight lifted," Auvinen writes in this beautiful,
contemplative memoir. After a fire destroyed Auvinen's Colorado Front Range Rocky Mountain home and
belongings when she was nearly 40, she moved to an isolated mountain community in the same state. "I felt
strangely euphoric," she writes, "no longer saddled with counting every penny for rent or bills, unburdened
by a house full of goods that required care, cleaning, or mending. Mine was the ecstasy of the
unencumbered." She watched the seasons unfold, with Elvis, her faithful dog, at her side. It is Elvis--and
her vital relationship with him--that's at the core of the book. "Elvis had long been my eyes, my ears, but
now I realized he was also my guru, my guide: His presence reminded me to play now, sleep now, explore
now, be now." Her narrative builds slowly but intensely. Auvinen shares rich details of mountain life:
"Living wild succinctly arranges priorities: You make food, take shelter, stay warm," her life lived "like a
ritual, equal to meditation or the ritual I had of writing down weather and birds each morning." This
breathtaking memoir honors the wildness of the Rockies and shows readers how they might come to rely on
their animal companions. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living." Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 56. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852307/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0611f4a3. Accessed 15 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852307
BOOK REVIEW
A Review of Karen Auvinen’s Rough Beauty
by TUCKER COOMBE • July 13, 2018No Comments
rough-beauty-9781501152283_lgWinter on Overland Mountain––some 3,000 feet above Boulder, Colorado––could be exhausting, writes Karen Auvinen. Snow fell “a foot at a time” and temperatures could plummet to twenty-five-degrees-below zero. Winds “howled and clawed at the cabin, rattling the gass panes like a live thing.”
Surviving winter, however, was by no means her greatest challenge.
Auvinen’s intimate and unforgettable debut memoir, Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living, tells of the decade or so she spent on the outskirts of civilization. Like Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Rough Beauty offers a glimpse into a life that’s pared down to its essentials, open to unexpected, even profound, change.
Auvinen was nearly forty when she began living in a rustic cabin about four miles outside the tiny town of Jamestown, Colorado. She supported herself by running a rural postal route, teaching writing at a nearby community college, and cooking once a week at the Mercantile Cafe––the town’s only business establishment.
Auvinen depicts her younger self as awkward and a bit prickly, “[p]roud to be called ‘fearless’ and ‘tough,’” she writes. When her first rented cabin burned down––leaving nothing but her truck, her beloved dog (a semi-feral husky named Elvis) and the clothes on her back––the Jamestown community “arrived like the cavalry.” One friend took her shopping for clothing essentials, another bought new supplies for Elvis, and customers on her postal route left her envelopes of cash. The town even held a benefit in her honor. But she couldn’t abide the attention or the goodwill. “I roasted on the twin spits of chagrin and embarrassment,” Auvinen writes, “…more uneasy with condolences and well wishes than I would have been with condemnation and blame.” She loaded up Elvis and headed to Utah for a few days of solitary camping.
Who among us hasn’t at least considered a life of solitude? My own attempt, decades ago, was short-lived and humiliating. One autumn, shortly after college, I decided to stay in a somewhat isolated, bare-bones house on Cape Cod. I’d envisioned long, peaceful days spent reading and writing, but instead found myself becoming unmoored without the comforting noises of summer. At night I’d wrap myself in a blanket, listen to the tick of an old shelf clock and recall in vivid detail every horror story I’d ever been told. I didn’t last a week.
Auvinen’s memoir purports to focus on her years of relative isolation on the mountain. But it’s the stories she tells of her childhood and her teenage years that are most affecting; without seeming melodramatic, they have a real sense of poignancy and immediacy.
An irreverent, headstrong kid, “I licked the sidewalk because I liked the taste of dirt,” says Auvinen, who grew up in a family where women were “parsley on the plate––accessories or helpmates.” Her father, an Air Force career man, ruled the family with tyranny and occasional violence.
Auvinen writes of her father’s decision, during her middle-school years, to relocate the family to Hawaii, and to euthanize the family dog rather than bringing her along. Before the dog’s final trip to the vet, he carried the struggling animal outside and tried to fit her into a wooden box he’d chosen for her burial. Karen watched in horror: “I couldn’t control the sound coming from my chest––the guttural, animal wail of grief.”
Karen began marshalling considerable will against her father’s bullying and “forged a dark armor to protect me and keep others at bay.” Before entering graduate school––in a symbolic rejection of her father––she changed her last name. He threatened to track her down. She eluded him by quitting her job and moving into a tent in the woods. She and her father would not speak for another decade.
Living alone, in relatively rough conditions, seemed to suit her. “My preference was for the earth, with its rough beauty, its inscrutability, its mixture of shit and muck,” she writes.
Gradually, Auvinen began to feel grounded by the rhythm of the seasons and to sense a slow “unraveling” inside herself. Perhaps most importantly, she was both buoyed and steadied by the stubborn companionship of Elvis. For years, even as she avoided friends and family during the holidays, she relished cooking dinners––roast chicken, perhaps, or rosemary lamb––to share with her dog. Opening her heart to Elvis, she later realized, was life-changing.
When Auvinen first set out to live on Overland Mountain, she believed that her “commitment was not to a person but to a place: “…I placed my bet on landscape, putting all my chips on wildness.” But for all its focus on mountain living, what this memoir really seems to be about is the difficult terrain of human love and connection.
___
Tucker Coombe writes about nature, education and dogs, and lives in Cincinnati.
'Rough Beauty' recounts a poet's journey from self-reliance to community living
When award-winning poet Karen Auvinen loses all in a fire, she must decide what kind of life to rebuild.
stack of booksWhat are you reading?
June 22, 2018
By Joan Gaylord
Fire is a finicky element. It destroys; but it also tempers and purifies. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the life of Karen Auvinen. In her new memoir, Rough Beauty, the award-winning poet recounts her struggle to rebuild her life after a devastating fire left her with nothing but the opportunity to begin again.
In the opening pages, Auvinen recounts the experience from years before, the day she drove her truck up a mountain road in the Colorado Rockies, her beloved dog Elvis riding shotgun beside her. That warm glow of a fire that she spotted up ahead – it was coming from her isolated mountain cabin. Rather than cozy and inviting, this fire was destroying her life. It had ravaged her home, consumed her belongings, and obliterated all traces of her daily life.
Auvinen had fought hard for her mountain life, a fight fueled by grit and determination. Nearly 40, she had put miles between herself and her dysfunctional family. She had made her way through grad school and had crafted a life based on independence and self-reliance. Living on the outskirts of town, high up in the hills of Colorado, she supported herself with a collection of part-time jobs that allowed her the freedom to write.
But that first night after the fire, sitting in a motel room paid for by the Red Cross, dressed in second-hand clothes given to her by local townspeople – the same ones she had kept at a distance for years – she admitted it was near impossible to feel self-sufficient when she needed everything.
Fighting back against the grief, Auvinen confronted her choices. With no physical remnants of her life, she realized she could easily disappear. Or, she could craft a new life. Ever the fighter, she started over. But this time, as if tempered by the fire, Auvinen surrendered to those powers beyond herself – the rhythm of nature, the change of seasons, the simple kindnesses expressed by those around her.
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She started by simply following the instinctive wisdom of her dog. Elvis lived in the present. He knew to begin with food and shelter. The two found another cabin, this one just as remote as the first, where Auvinen allowed herself time to heal.
In a narrative that reads like a captivating novel, Auvinen’s tale covers the next ten years of her life. She marks time, not by years, but by the changing seasons. She observes the world around her – the bear she watches from a distance and the fox she lures up onto her deck with cooked chicken. She navigates the storms of each season – pelting spring rains and paralyzing winter snowfalls. She finds solace in daily routines.
Auvinen embraces her isolated life. She draws from Zen wisdom the understanding that being “alone” need not mean “lonely.” Rather, she discovers opportunity in her solitude, an occasion to live a life free of distraction, a life that is genuine and authentic. In this authenticity she heals and sheds the grit of her previous experiences. She discovers tenderness.
This openness provides opportunities to forge connections with her nearest neighbors, the collection of quirky residents of Jamestown, Colo., a town that describes itself as “The Home of the Somewhat Feral.” In some ways, she had no choice. It is near impossible, after all, to live unnoticed in a town where everyone knows of the fateful fire. As she mends, she doesn’t simply respond to peoples’ well-intended queries asking how she is doing. She forges real connections.
Auvinen celebrates holidays with her neighbors in the town center. She invites friends to her home for meals. When she joins the local arts organization, she mounts something akin to a coup as she gathers forces with others against the old guard who resist change. They organize poetry nights and classes taught by local artists. After all, this is her town, too, she declares.
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And while she sees such activities as a means to stake her claim in the quirky town, one might also argue that she is yielding to yet another power larger than herself – the rhythms and traditions of small town life. Jamestown might be a little more eccentric than most, but this simply provides comedic material for this gifted writer. But Auvinen’s candor as she recounts how she wrestles with her impulsion to grow and to fight against outgrown or unreasonable restraints reveals her admirable courage.
Hers is a voice not found often enough in literature – a woman who eschews the prescribed role outlined for her by her family and discovers her own path. Refined by the fires of her experiences, Auvinen discovers her authentic self.