SKINNY DIPPING

The author of the acclaimed Dangerous Birds followed that success with a new collection of essays on the natural world, these connected by the theme of water: exploring issues as varied as the joy that water brings, the wistful rememberings it engenders, and its sacredness. As with all of Lembke's essays, the world of classical myth and its characters meld with her native haunts and their people, lending resonance to the seemingly simplest things: a beetle in the garden, a tangle of forgotten roses, an afternoon rainstorm. Now available in paperback for the first time, Skinny Dipping brings us waters as diverse as the mythical River Styx and the Bullpasture, a stream near Lembke's Virginia home. In the title essay she looks down a long corridor of time to visit Pliny, the natural historian, for a "skinny dip" in A.D. 79; "Up the Creek" examines a lazy day's canoe trip with a frightened young friend about to leave home; "And This Way the Water Comes Down at the Gorge" is a tale of a burial--with a fine supporting cast of Faulkneresque characters. Skinny Dipping will delight all lovers of Janet Lembke's other books, and anyone who appreciates the art of the personal essay.