Whispers from the Valley of the Yak

2024 Independent Press Awards Distinguished Favorite in Memoir

“An exquisitely told, never-to-be-forgotten story.”
—Story Circle Network

“This gripping memoir from Jacquelyn Tuxill combines a story of familial struggles and reconciliation with the grandeur of revelation amid high mountains. Her climactic journeys to her birthplace of Chengdu and the majestic peak Minya Konka in southwestern China, first with her parents and then with her grown children, rewarded her with a vantage point from which to understand and affirm her personal history. They also offer readers a dramatic counterpoint to their customary worlds, which is thetrue gift of fine travel writing.”
—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and English and environmental studies teacher at Middlebury College

“In Whispers from the Valley of the Yak,Jacquelyn Tuxill breaks away from a confining childhood with parents committed to their medical work—first as missionaries in China, where the author was born, and later in West Virginia… . Her vivid descriptions of panoramas in Alaska and China mirror the wild beauty she ultimately finds within herself. This memoir will take readers on a journey they won’t want to end.”
—Louella Bryant, author of Sheltering Angel: A Novel Based on a True Story

“Whispers from the Valley of the Yak is a story about landscapes. From her birthplace in China to her connection with Denali, North America’s tallest peak, Tuxill navigates her early years as a mom in the shadow of her rocky relationship with her own mother. She finds her way beyond the lost relationship with her spouse, then passes through the grief of losing her beloved father and later, her mother. Ultimately, Tuxill explores how she came to terms with the unexpected landscape of her own heart. A wonderfully rendered story.”
—Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan, author of A Tender Distance and Our Perfect Wild

Even as a child, Jacquelyn Tuxill’s world view was expansive. Born in Chengdu, China, of medical missionary parents, as a toddler she escaped the final months of WWII with her family and celebrated her third birthday in India before obtaining passage to the US and settling in a rural West Virginia town in 1948. After graduating cum laude from Muskingum College with a BS in biology, she worked in a medical research lab while her husband attended medical school; they later moved to Alaska, where Jackie discovered a love of outdoor adventure and a passion for nature that led to a thirty-five-year career in environmental work. “Ashes and Rivers,” a chapter adapted from Whispers From the Valley of the Yak, appeared in the 2019 anthology True Stories: The Narrative Project, Vol I. For the past three decades, Jackie has made her home in Lincoln, Vermont.

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