Chickasaw poet, novelist, and essayist Linda Hogan brings together 16 pieces growing out of her readings of the natural world, plants, animals, and Native American rituals. In beautiful prose that will send shivers up and down your spine, she articulates the mystical connections between Earth's relations. Hogan reflects poetically upon the language of corn and sunflowers; the fears and misapprehensions we bring to encounters with snakes, bats, and wolves; and the yearnings we all have for communication with other species.

In one of the best essays, the author writes about a sweat lodge ceremony as a ritual of healing designed to re-connect humans with "our broken-off pieces of self and world." Dwellings is contemporary wisdom literature at its capacious best — full of both soul and spirit.