Part memoir, part literary criticism, part self-analysis, Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby (Viking) is an inter-genre meditation on the ways our lives are orchestrated by stories. Solnit does not believe that fairy tales, novels, and religious parables offer escape routes from life, but rather are transformative blueprints for personal redemption and growth. Here she reflects on her turn from disaster writing to this book's overarching interest in healing and metamorphosis.