Catapult

Working beside his mother at an apple plant in Yakima, Washington, teenage Noé Álvarez dreamed of a life different from that of his Mexican immigrant parents. He became a first-generation college student, but struggled until he discovered Peace and Dignity Journeys, a grassroots, months-long marathon that takes indigenous participants from Canada to Guatemala. Scraped together by volunteers and little funding, PDJ connects runners to the land and native communities along the way. Sporting neon yellow shoes, one change of clothes, a journal, and a sixteen-hundred-page dictionary—“that, I argued to myself when I packed, contained all the books in the world”—Álvarez struck south from British Columbia with an eclectic band of Dené, Gitxsan, Tohono O’odham, Purépecha, Maya, and Apache runners. Read this soul-searching memoir for a deeper look at the capacity to suffer and transcend through movement, and for a range of real-life characters whose stories will stay with you long after the running ends.

A granddaughter returns to Taiwan to trace her family's story through the island's mountains, forests, and coastline. Geology, botany, and memory braided together. Quiet and precise.