Overview

Jackie, born of medical missionaries in China during World War II, rejected her connection to her birth country growing up because it made her different. A return to China with her parents in 1980, however, is life-changing. After always having known her mother as distant and emotionally abusive, she is stunned to see a loving side to her for the first time-and pleasantly surprised by the affinity she feels for her birth country. These revelations launch Jackie on a quest to understand her difficult childhood and who she is beyond ""wife,"" ""mother,"" and ""daughter."" Her journey takes her first to the mountainous landscapes of Alaska, where she finds a passion for nature and begins a thirty-five-year environmental career. As she builds her life there and later in New England, she makes multiple trips to her birth country-with her parents, alone, and with her adult children. Each of these trips provides a benchmark for the growth and transformation she undergoes as she learns to create the authentic life she craves. Deeply reflective and sensitively rendered, Whispers from the Valley of the Yak touches on the healing power of nature and universal themes of unconditional love and forgiveness-and, most importantly, being true to oneself.

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9781647425494

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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 the true 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

Author Information

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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