Winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers' Gold Medal for Best Midwest Fiction. In rural Missouri in the 1970s, thirteen-year-old Pearl Swinton has just had her first mystical vision. There is no place for Pearl's "gift" in the bloody reality of subsistence farming and rural poverty. As her visions unfold, she must find her way in a family and a community that react with fear and violence. When Pearl discovers that her Aunt Nadine has a similar gift, she bicycles across the state to find her. That trip unexpectedly throws Pearl into a journey to save her runaway sister and sends her into a deep exploration of herself, her visions, and her visceral relationship to the earth. Told with fierce lyricism, Earth is a story about the importance of finding one's own truth and sense of self in dire circumstances and against the odds. It is also a story about the link between understanding ourselves and our relationship with the earth. In this first of the five-book Elemental Journey Series that will follow Pearl across continents and into adulthood, Caroline Allen introduces a form of storytelling that is unflinching in its honesty, filled with compassion, and underscored with originality. Includes a thought-provoking Book Group Guide.

Earth: Book One of the Elemental Journey Series

Literature & Fiction

Allen, Caroline H

Literary

Art of Storytelling

Turbulence opens this second book in the Elemental Journey Series as Pearl Swinton, now in her twenties, uproots from the Midwest and flies to Tokyo, where she has no job, no friends, and no home, a place where she hopes to live floating above the culture. How will she survive with her mystical visions in a country so foreign from everything she knows? Pearl lands at a Jesuit mission and is magnetized to the ethereal missionary Usui. After she is forced to leave, she is thrown unprepared into the complicated world of Japanese culture and must learn to maneuver friendships, understand love, and balance the intensity of working at one of the city’s largest newspapers. When she stumbles upon Usui living as a homeless man, a journey begins that draws Pearl deep into Japan’s hidden homeless underworld. Having given up any connection to civilization to “find himself,” Usui brings Pearl face to face with her own homelessness and challenges her to begin the painful journey of understanding her visions and finding herself. In the end, hope flies on the paper wings of thousands of origami cranes. Pearl is called to her own mysticism, not just for herself, but for a world where the loss of magic may well be the real threat. A fundamentally radical work of art, Air tackles core issues facing individuals coming of age in today’s world. How can anyone feel safe and at home on a planet threatened by escalating violence and devastating climate change? Where, truly, is home?

Air: Book Two of the Elemental Journey Series

Genre Fiction

Water opens with a dark night of the soul in Seattle. Our protagonist must learn to own herself as a mystic and artist and be the change she wishes to see in the world.

Water: Book Four of the Elemental Journey Series

Allen, Caroline

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Books by Art of Storytelling

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Art of Storytelling publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Earth: Book One of the Elemental Journey Series

Air: Book Two of the Elemental Journey Series

Water: Book Four of the Elemental Journey Series