Detours and Discoveries

A writer and professor of sociology at the University of Alberta, Amy Kaler took the first year of the COVID‑19 pandemic to explore the province she’s called home for two decades. She stumbled onto ghost towns, austere natural wonders, and relics from some extraordinary historical moments, all of which make their way into Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet. Part memoir, part farewell to the natural world, and part memorial road trip, this book takes the reader on a cinematic roadside tour of Alberta, while Kaler reflects on “getting older during an environmental catastrophe.”

The eclectic personal narrative is structured around detours and discoveries. “I am drawn to the ruined and abandoned,” Kaler writes in her prologue. As she drove, she found mournful human footprints everywhere: deserted farmsteads and schools and thousands of orphan oil wells. She explored places that momentarily housed roadside attractions, government-funded institutions, or what...