The Illuminated Desert

Moab, UT: Canyonlands Natural History Association / Back of Beyond Books, 2008. Very limited edition. Leather bound. Fine. Chloe Hedden. Unpaginated. Duodecimo [18 cm] Text by Terry Tempest Williams. Art by Chloe Hedden. Calligraphy by Chris Montague. One of five copies of this very limited edition, custom-bound in brown leather by Restoration Books in Logan, Utah. The five were smaller printer's dummies for a limited folio edition of 26 for Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah. The boards are decoratively embossed in blind with representations of pictographs. Gilt spine, marbled endpapers. This charming production is patterned after the illuminated manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The author describes it as: "...a naturalist's book of prayers, a collection of episodes, seen by two students of the natural world." The volume is arranged alphabetically with each page representing a different letter of the alphabet (A is for Antelope). The pages are beautifully illustrated. A glossary at the end of the book provides natural histories to accompany the small devotions of the desert alphabet.