"Laura Julier has provided us not only with a profound demonstration of how to love a place, but also unique insight into how that love serves, supports and clarifies the complexities of the human heart and soul."

– Thomas Dean, Little Village

“Laura Julier in Off Izaak Walton Road marks out the perimeter of the losses in her life, not by confiding them to the page but by careful indirection. She brings the reader with her as she retreats to a house on a rural road and season by season discovers the particulars of the world that goes on without all of us. Her power of attention is formidable, and her prose is at every point lucid.”—Sven Birkerts, author of The Miro Worm and the Mysteries of Writing

“Off Izaak Walton Road asks us why some places hold a grip on our imaginations, what it is about these places that allows us to be more fully ourselves, and how these places change the stories we tell about who we are and the world in which we live. Written with clarity, candor, and a tenderness of attention that is profoundly moving, this book shows the often-transformative power of loss, solace, and joy.”—Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckoning: Essays

“Off Izaak Walton Road asks us why some places hold a grip on our imaginations, what it is about these places that allows us to be more fully ourselves, and how these places change the stories we tell about who we are and the world in which we live. Written with clarity, candor, and a tenderness of attention that is profoundly moving, this book shows the often-transformative power of loss, solace, and joy.”—Lacy M. Johnson, author of The Reckoning: Essays