Loose of Earth

A Memoir

By Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn

University of Texas Press

An arresting memoir of love and unbending religion, toxicity and disease, and one family’s desperate wait for a miracle that never came.

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn was the oldest of five children, a twelve-year-old from Lubbock, Texas, whose evangelical family eschewed public education for homeschooling, and wove improbable scientific theories into literal interpretations of the Bible. Then her father, a former air force pilot, was diagnosed with cancer at the age of thirty-eight, and, “it was like throwing gasoline on the Holy Spirit.” Stirred by her mother, the family committed to an extreme diet and sought deliverance from equally extreme sources: a traveling tent preacher, a Malaysian holy man, a local faith-healer who led services called “Miracles on 34th Street.”

What they didn’t know at the time was that their lives were entangled with a larger, less visible environmental catastrophe. Fire-fighting foams containing carcinogenic compounds had contaminated the drinking water of every military site where her father worked. Commonly referred to as “forever chemicals,” the presence of PFAS in West Texas besieged a landscape already burdened with vanishing water, taking up residence in wells and in the bloodstreams of people who lived there. An arresting portrait of the pernicious creep of decline, and a powerful cry for environmental justice, Loose of Earth captures the desperate futility and unbending religious faith that devastated a family, leaving them waiting for a miracle that would never come.

[A] blazing debut…[Blackburn’s] sentence-level excellence and gift for subtle characterization help this take flight. It’s a formidable portrait of the thin line between faith and delusion. Publishers Weekly

Loose of Earth is a poignant memoir—at once a family story and a bold exposé of the lasting effects of ‘forever chemicals.’ Foreword Reviews

[A] captivating memoir…Loose of Earth is an important read on the precarious state of America, as the dangers of religious fanaticism and the damage humans have caused to the planet continue to creep forward. Chicago Review of Books

[A] gimlet-eyed debut...A thoughtful coming-of-age memoir from an American hinterland. Kirkus

In this moving memoir that weaves together seemingly disparate themes such as environmentalism and religion, the author details her relatives’ faith-driven slide into folly and the likely cause of their tragedy: government negligence. Texas Monthly

In this captivating memoir, Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn tells the story of ecological disaster and the boundaries of love and faith. . . . Loose of Earth is an important read on the precarious state of America, as the dangers of religious fanaticism and the damage humans have caused to the planet continue to creep forward. Chicago Review of Books

In her grief-stricken, gorgeously composed memoir, Lubbock native Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn writes about her father’s demise to a cancer likely caused by exposure to legacy chemicals while he was an Air Force pilot. There are two types of toxicity forming the bedrock of Loose of Earth: religious fanaticism and environmental contamination. With a scope that accommodates her personal traumas and wider environmental justice issues alike, Blackburn details her born-again family’s embrace of faith healers away from science alongside a larger investigation into PFAs, and in particular how they have impacted West Texas’ drinking water. Austin Chronicle

I felt Loose of Earth in every single fiber of my being. It had my guts tangled in knots, my emotions on edge, my brain boiling, and my limbs trembling. Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn created pain-drenched prose on these pages. Her words brought back painful, tearful memories from my childhood and adolescence – stuff that I thought was buried deep in my psyche. That is the power of a good story, especially when it’s a poignant memoir. Bearded Gentlemen Music

K.D. Blackburn’s father is a runner, a former Air Force pilot, and civilian captain for American Airlines. Her mother is a veterinarian. It is somewhat inexplicable, then, in a family headed by parents whose careers hinge so deeply on science, that when the father is diagnosed with colon cancer in 1997, they lean harder on their evangelical faith than medical treatment. In one harrowing moment, Blackburn’s paternal grandfather implores his son to seek care other than prayer and supplements; in another, a pre-teen Blackburn herself—the eldest of five children—believes it is her own lack of devotion that is getting in the way of God healing her father. Underpinning the narrative is Blackburn’s father’s military service, and the prevalence of the use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, also known today as ‘forever chemicals.’ Loose of Earth is a complicated and beautiful exploration of caring for family in the best ways we know how. Electric Literature

Like its windswept west Texas setting, Blackburn's narrative contains both harsh realities and seductively powerful illusions. She details the tightknit community and the impossible promises of the church her family belonged to; her struggles to care for her siblings and her resentment toward her parents for keeping them so isolated; and her grief at the death of her dad and the rock-solid certainty of her belief. Quiet but unsparing in its gaze, Loose of Earth is an unusual faith-deconstruction memoir that deals with the fault lines in a family and the unseen but real environmental hazards that threaten the health of human beings and the earth they walk. Shelf Awareness

And what a ride this is—vulnerable and raw, with moments that provoke anger and horror, yet told with compassion and a desire to understand the people who caused her such pain. And most importantly, with compassion for young Kate. Chicago Reader

Exquisite new memoir. Washington Independent Review of Books

Blackburn’s prose is impeccable, and her narrative utterly absorbing...[in this] evangelical West Texas bildungsroman...[This book is] an immense testament to the capacity of a daughter’s love—and an act of faith in our better human instincts. Commonweal Magazine

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn rolls out of Texas like a tornado of rainbows. You think her voice is tender as a hymn, then she uses it to kick in your back door and steal your bourbon. The song she’s singing is as melancholy and rocking as your favorite Joe Ely record. This book is that good. Luis Alberto Urrea

Loose of Earth is a profoundly soulful quest for sacred truth across a vast sea of loss. Kathleen Blackburn's tender intelligence and rock-solid compassion are ballast through storms of illness, religion, family, girlhood, and the unthinking desecration of this earth, ultimately offering harbor on a new shore, where we arrive transformed. Claire Vaye Watkins

Fierce yet compassionate, poetic yet clearly spoken, Loose of Earth draws us into a world made strange by disease, fear, and faith. Riotous with magic and mayhem, a sublime juxtaposition between the ordinary and the surreal, Kathleen Blackburn’s debut memoir evokes innocence, anger, honor, and redemption and speaks to the lengths one family will go to keep hold of its own, no matter the cost. Loose of Earth is a coming-of-age story that will lift your heart and sail it out on a sea of love, loss, and endurance. Kim Barnes

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn teaches in the University of Chicago Creative Writing Program. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Colorado Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and swamp pink, and was listed as notable in Best American Essays.