Five-Mountain Morning

In his second memoir, “Five-Mountain Morning,” teacher and writer William Bridges describes a life that has stretched from the Army in postwar Germany to journalism around the world to archaeology on a remote island in the North Atlantic. This book follows “Under the Heaven Tree,” a childhood memoir that a critic says “did what we all should do-not only recall our lost lives and loved ones from oblivion, but also see ourselves as links in a long chain of being that reaches dimly backward and brightly forward.” In “Five-Mountain Morning,” Bridges writes about lost loves, marriage and children, a writer’s life, travels, and encounters with people ranging from a woman who named her cat for a Kentucky Derby winner to actress Marlene Dietrich. Bridges is a storyteller and poet whose work has been called both “beautifully crafted” and “never far removed from the daily course of things.”