Year of the Comets

On the clearest nights in the darkest places you can see as many as two thousand stars. On what scaffolding are they hung? Jan DeBlieu began to wonder. Her husband had become enveloped in a depression of his own, and both he and DeBlieu were struggling to find points of light out of that darkness. DeBlieu discovers it in the sky above, a firmament of order and beauty that prompts her to consider the worlds inside our minds, the delicate framework of neurons and synapses that support our fragile selves. Year of the Comets is her record of the journey she and her husband take from pain to healing.Jan DeBlieu, a recipient of the John Burroughs Medal for Wind, contributes frequently to Audubon, the New York Times Magazine, and Orion. The Cape Hatteras Coastkeeper for the North Carolina Coastal Federation, she is also the author of Hatteras Journal and Meant to be Wild, chosen by the Library Journal as one of 1992's best science books of the year.