Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, THE MAGIC EYE: A STORY OF SAVING A LIFE AND A PLACE IN THE AGE OF ANXIETY. ISBN: 978-1-939301-57-4, $22, 200 pages. See Caryn’s book tour and more about The Magic Eye here— https://www.carynmirriamgoldberg.com/magic-eye Buy your advance signed copy from the author here https://checkout.square.site/merchant/FVQF5K6GCNQ86/checkout/KWLHIXZDUTWSW3PUP6I4GQ5F 

“Nothing could have prepared me for being diagnosed with a rare and deadly eye cancer in the middle of trying to save the Kansas land where my husband and I live,” Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg writes of her new memoir, The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety. Harriet Lerner calls The Magic Eye “….a luminous, poetic meditation on survival, community, and resilience. With tenderness and humor, her memoir speaks to the fierce beauty of holding on to life, to land, and to hope when the odds seem insurmountable. A deeply human story, this book is a testament to courage and the power of place that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.” The Magic Eye encompasses a mythic, quirky, and timely journey with a cast of unforgettable friends that make surviving the odds—both the danger of invasive cancer in a body and invasive development vying for tallgrass prairie—possible. Crossing through the pandemic, this memoir is guided by tenderness, curiosity, and more than a dash of magic as Mirriam-Goldberg writes of giving endangered turtles names such as Gandalf and Harrison Ford, undergoing surgery to insert a radioactive disk in her eye, outsmarting a tornado, and the Rube Goldberg contraption of the body. The Magic Eye investigates what it means to reinhabit our bodies and ecosystems. Book Design: Paul Hotvedt

Praise for The Magic Eye

“In The Magic Eye, Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg transforms the harrowing reality of a rare cancer diagnosis and the urgent fight to save a beloved fifth-generation farm into a luminous, poetic meditation on survival, community, and resilience. With tenderness and humor, her memoir speaks to the fierce beauty of holding on to life, to land, and to hope when the odds seem insurmountable. A deeply human story, this book is a testament to courage and the power of place that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.” ~ Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.  author of The Dance of Anger and Why Won’t You Apologize?

“No endorsement can do justice to this vivid, lyric, wise, wry, compassionate, profoundly spiritual memoir of passage through some severe life trials. The Magic Eye is a microcosmic epic of unvaunting human triumph. Bursting with life in its myriad forms, this is a book to love and to share.” ~ Stephanie Mills, author of In Service of the Wild and Epicurean Simplicity

“In this outstanding, beautifully written memoir, celebrated poet Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg tells two interweaving stories of redemption, healing, and courage, contrasting the struggle to save her life—following a diagnosis of eye cancer—with the fight to preserve her husband’s ancestral land in Kansas. It’s a riveting tale that will lift your heart and deepen your courage. I loved it.” ~Mark Matousek, author of Lessons From an American Stoic: How Emerson Can Change Your Life

“We’re really in a struggle right now all over the planet, and we need stories like The Magic Eye to make us more attentive and mindful in asking how we place ourselves in right relations with all of creation. Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg’s memoir embodies how we can shift our lens—finding new ways to see that we don’t live among resources, we live among relatives. This memoir reminds us how, if we care for the land, it cares for us. It also shows us how much our own healing is rooted in our healing of the earth.” ~ Daniel Wildcat, author of On Indigenuity: Learning the Lessons of Mother Earth

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009–13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of over two dozen books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; Landed (Mammoth), poetry; and Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Her poetry and prose have been widely published in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies over the years. Founder of Transformative Language Arts (writing, music, storytelling, and other word arts for social and personal transformation), Caryn is a beloved writing workshop facilitator and writing coach with over thirty years of experience. Caryn offers weekly “Write Where You Are: A Writer’s Companion” through her Patreon and her long-running blog, “Everyday Magic.” She makes her home with eco- logical writer Ken Lassman south of Lawrence, Kansas where the deer and the wild turkeys roam, a dog and cat keep house, and their adult children frequently visit. CarynMirriamGoldberg.com Author photo by Stephen Locke