Kirjahaku

This astonishing new collection from poet Bethany Lee weaves the thread of her keen attention around life's joys and sorrows, draws them tightly together and offers them into our hands. With unflinching courage she extracts beauty from her journeys as seafarer and grief-tender, makes her way into the present moment, and invites us to come along.The Breath Between offers good company for hard days, water for the thirsty spirit, and a summons to inhabit your own life more fully. You will not regret the time you spend in the chapel of these words.

"Begin here," says Bethany Lee, in her inspirational new collection, Etude for Belonging. "Now is the time for us to take courage." And as you answer this invitation, you will find courage indeed, here among musings on galaxies and trillium, shipwrecks and spinning wheels, here where there is room for broken hearts, for healing, and for hope.This book takes us on an uncharted course "out where the sea is always/turning into sky" and steadily guides us back to the love at the center, back to the place we all belong, "which is here/which is together."

Step away from the shore and into the journey with Bethany Lee's The Coracle and the Copper Bell. This collection speaks of summer plums and starlight, of circuses and saltwater, all pointing to the work it takes to weave body and soul into a trustworthy vessel, capable of navigating the currents of a life with curiosity and courage. These poems will carry you through the undoing to the essence beyond. You will find here a faithful companion to buoy you in the lifelong voyage of becoming.

For years, Bryan and Bethany Lee dreamed of traveling by sailboat in the Pacific Ocean. They spent a decade preparing along with their two young children, and finally, when their kids were in middle school, they crossed the Columbia River Bar and headed south. They survived their first treacherous night in the ocean and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, through the Channel Islands of California, and on into Mexico.When their hand-built dinghy went missing on the coast of Baja, they hammered together a new one in a Cabo San Lucas parking spot and carried on with their journey.Again and again, the Lees were welcomed into the lives of those they met on the way and buoyed by the generosity of strangers who became friends. In Close to the Surface, Bethany recounts her family's story, her own uncertain pilgrimage, and the ingenuity and courage it takes to sail over the horizon and find your way home.

Told from the perspective of three seemingly unconnected teenagers, Called Upon steers the adolescent reader through a series of twists and turns that merge together with jaw-dropping results. Kaitlin, the social pariah of her high school, is so relieved to have made friends at Camp Overlook that she is willing to look past the camp’s anomalies: creepy counselors, 24-hour video surveillance, and campers disappearing quietly into the night. Dr. Forsythe, the mastermind behind the Overlook experiment, explains that Kaitlin has a genetic gift—one which laid dormant until her stay at summer camp. Having never considered herself normal, let alone special, Kaitlin is dazzled to have an ability with world-changing implications. After a terrifying warning from Dr. Forsythe’s embittered son and then discovering a dead body in the doctor’s walk-in freezer, Kaitlin must decide whether to embrace her new gift and follow Dr. Forsythe or use her gift to defeat the very system from which it was created. By the end, readers come away from Called Upon feeling surprised and exhilarated, they will also, like Kaitlin, leave with a new understanding of their own intrinsic worth and limitless potential.