Part history, part memoir, I Am a Stranger Here Myself taps dimensions of human yearning: the need to belong, the snarl of family history, and embracing womanhood in the patriarchal American West.

Debra Gwartney is the author of Live Through This: A Mother's Memoir of Runaway Daughters and Reclaimed Love and the coeditor of Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. She teaches in Pacific University's MFA in Writing program and lives in Western Oregon.