Description
Katharine Haake's The Height and Depth of Everything is a book of journeys in which dislocated women make unsettling forays into the new West. There, some violent expression of nature disrupts their lives, forcing them to readjust their vision of the world. Like the places they live—Washington state in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount St. Helens; the rubble-strewn epicenter of Southern California after a recent earthquake; the flooded streets of a desert town in Utah—the characters in this collection are all "picking up the pieces" of lives shaken not only by natural but spiritual disaster. In the precariousness of their lives, these characters find redemption by submitting to the indeterminacy of human life.

Reviews
“Katherine Haake . . . raises the bar for experimental short fiction another mighty notch.” —Tod Goldberg, author of Fake, Liar Cheat

“Traveling on Katherine Haake’s sentences into her stories is a deeply satisfying journey, one that takes us into precarious landscapes of the American West and into an intricate, fragile geology of the human heart. This is an accomplished, impressive collection of intelligent fiction.” —Hans Ostrom, author of Subjects Apprehended: Poems

“In a paean to the craft of writing and strength of language, Haake mixes her family’s oral history with that of California’s natural one, imparting a rich narrative of rivers, dams, and floods, mothers, sons and daughters. At its heart is the Shasta Dam project, both boondoggle and benefit to California’s central valley. At its soul, two young girls, one raped, one blind. Weaving fiction with fact, Haake equates nature’s basic elements (earth, fire, water) with those of mankind (love, livelihood, safety). Whether spinning a tale or stating the truth, Haake’s eloquence has as much power to move mountains as the engineers and surveyors whose dams so dramatically changed the landscape of her beloved home.” —Carol Haggas, Booklist, February 2003

“There is a reason for literature, the telling of common stories in uncommon ways, the telling of miracles so carefully that we finally see them. Katharine Haake’s work is literature, bold and brave, and not for the fainthearted. The Height and Depth of Everything is a wonderful collection. Buy this book, read it, and give it to a friend.” —Sharman Apt Russell, author of Anatomy of a Rose