All Over Creation Hardback - 2003

de Ozeki, Ruth

The quirkily titled My Year of Meats took the literary community by storm, garnering widespread, glowing reviews, awards, and a still-growing readership for first-time author Ruth Ozeki. Newsweek declared it "a feast that leaves you hungry for whatever Ozeki cooks up next." Well, hunger no more; All Over Creation is served and Ozeki has laid out a four-star spread replete with humor, warmth, originality, and brilliantly drawn characters whom you'll never forget.

Meet Yumi Fuller. A Japanese American prodigal daughter, Yumi-aka Yummy-is returning home to the Idaho potato farm she ran away from twenty-five years earlier. Then a freewheeling hippie chick, Yumi is now a (semi) responsible parent and a professor with a side gig selling lava lots in Hawaii. But can she possibly be prepared to face her dying father, Alzheimer's-devastated mother, and Cass, the best friend she left behind? Not to mention a former lover whose agribusiness client has banished him to Idaho-where he lands in the small-town community he once offended and in Yumi's life. As she grapples with her conflicted past and uncertain future, Yumi collides with the Seeds of Resistance, an eco-activist group with a knack for causing trouble wherever it plants itself.

With her signature wit and uncanny ability to evoke the pathos and humor of life's conundrums, Ozeki spins a timeless tale of birth and death, family and friendship. All Over Creation is the emotionally resonant and utterly unique story of an ordinary woman just trying to make sense of it all as the unceasing cycle of all creation continues around her.