The Silver State
On the Trail of the Jackalope

No Charity in the Wilderness

No Charity in the Wilderness is a long journey into the new American West. From the southern border to the isolating two-lane highways in the desert, this collection is a prayer of reconciliation with so much that troubles us–those who live without resources or voices–and their possible future in this ever-changing landscape of desire.

Griffin has spent many decades in the high desert trying to find the way forward–when what he knows has been challenged and still there is breath on the horizon. One day an ancient Chinese poet comes to visit: “Snow deepens/ to quiet what I once believed, and Wang Wei stoops from the spine: / this is how you become silence.” Even if you doubt the old poet’s counsel, like Griffin, you want to journey with him into the wilderness.

More Non-Juvenile Books

  • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die.

  • Nothing in the world soothes the soul better than Gospel music.

  • In James, when the enslaved Jim learns he is to be sold in New Orleans, he hides on Jackson Island to devise a plan for escape. Meanwhile, Huck Finn, having faked his own death, embarks on a perilous journey down the Mississippi River, intertwining their fates as they confront themes of freedom and agency in a reimagined narrative of American literature.

    Read More about "James"...

  • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.