Waiting on the Sky, by Cheryl Unruh

Cheryl Unruh, former columnist for the Emporia Gazette and one of my favorite authors, has done it again with her second collection of essays on the state I proudly call home.

In Waiting on the Sky, Cheryl describes Kansas--community and people--in a series of essays that remind us of the joy and peril, the love and the heartbreak of life on the ground in a rectangle state.

We who live on the prairie love our sky. It is as much a part of the landscape as the land itself. White the earth gives us roots and plenty of soft grass on which we can curl our bodies and fall asleep, the sky gives us flight, imagination, a place to go with our eyes, a place to go with our minds.

Cheryl once again makes me want to slow down, take more time to absorb the scenery, spend more time watching the clouds that pass overhead. The book takes us back and forth, from the landscape and experience of being Kansan, to Kansans themselves and glimpses of Cheryl's life growing up on the plains to her life now in the Flint Hills.

I was delighted, of course, to find "Tracy's Hometown" within the pages of this book (even though Cheryl revealed my secret childhood run-away spot). I enjoyed her ruminations on the western Kansas tumbleweed, as well, though I think I'm more appreciative of the wind, in general, than Cheryl. 

Waiting on the Sky is the book to keep on your chairside table, full of word morsels you will want to bite and then nibble again, to take with your morning coffee as you contemplate the start of your day, or to sample with your nighttime tea.

If you haven't picked up your copy yet, head right on over to Quincy Press for ordering instructions. 

See my review of Cheryl's first book, Flyover People, by clicking this link.