{"product_id":"9781582435916","title":"A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses","description":"\u003cbr\u003eFrom Lao-tse and the Buddha, St. Anthony and the early Celtic hermits, through Rousseau, Thoreau, Ruskin, and up to the present day, certain gifted persons have shown a vocation for living alone and apart, finding in simplicity and attention to nature a spiritual space to be explored and rejoiced in. Others, retreating from the world in scorn or cut off from it by scandal, have found that solitude is Hell, a pit of melancholy and morbid fancy. In this, her first work of nonfiction, novelist Isabel Colegate gives us the lives of the solitaries — male and female, medieval and modern, divinely inspired and patently fraudulent. But this is no mere gallery of saints and sinners, poets and misanthropes. It is also a reevaluation of solitude for our times, and a reminder that it is in solitude that the soul meets itself, refreshes itself, and from there goes out to join the communal dance.","brand":"Counterpoint Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47034916438256,"sku":"9781582435916","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781582435916_p0.jpg?v=1763800394","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781582435916","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}