Books by Robert Vivian

Though spiritually akin to prose poems, Robert Vivian's dervish essays retain an essayistic form while reflecting the dynamic movement and ancient symbolism of Turkey's whirling dervishes with their wild lyricism, sometimes breathless cadences, and mesmerizing unspooling.

A prismatic look at the impact of loss on individual lives, Water and Abandon tells the moving and paradoxical story of those brought together by the very thing that tears them apart. As deeply felt as it is finely crafted, the novel confirms Robert Vivian's place among the most interesting fiction writers of our day.

A personal essay collection describing people and place and what it means to be human in the 21st century.

In one hand, Jesse Breedlove holds a bottle of Cuervo Gold - or what's left of it - in the other, the shovel with which he has just unearthed the bones of a small girl buried in the cellar of a Catholic church in Omaha, Nebraska. So begins Breedlove's odyssey across the literal and mythical landscapes of America.

In the tradition of the meditative essay, the writing of Robert Vivian begins with a mundane moment and, through the delicate workings of curiosity, contemplation, and inspiration, reveals unsuspected meaning. In his second collection of essays Vivian finds his occasions in midwestern towns and European cities.

Lem Purchase is in California when a call comes in the dead of night: his younger, disturbed brother in Nebraska announces his plans to carry out an act of terrorism targeting the state capitol building in Lincoln. This isn't the first time Lem has had to make a frantic check on Jackson. Nor is it the first time that author Robert Vivian has taken us to the haunted world of the Great Plains.

"Robert Vivian's prose is lyrical and harrowing - harrowing in the Biblical sense," Sven Birkerts said of The Mover of Bones, the first book in Vivian's Tall Grass Trilogy. That same lyrical power carries this new volume to a place of hard-won hope and redemption at once both spiritual and earthly.