An Anchor in the Sea of Time: Essays -- Stephen Harrigan, Hardcover

A new collection of essays grappling with identity and memory, from a master of the form.

The author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Gates of the Alamo, the sweeping Texas history Big Wonderful Thing, and decades of incisive journalism, Stephen Harrigan is an adept writer skilled in crafting memorable characters. From this singular voice now comes a collection of essays tackling the most personal, and yet most expansive, themes of all: identity, memory, and time itself.

An Anchor in the Sea of Time unfolds individual stories but also a larger narrative about the development and distortions of history. In one essay, a painting on his grandparents' wall is seared in Harrigan's young mind. In another, a group trip to Vietnam stirs up a sobering confrontation with class privilege among Americans who fought there and others, like Harrigan, who did their best not to. The award-winning essay "Off Course" reflects on the father Harrigan never met. And Harrigan's reporting about the Karankawas, an Indigenous group from the Texas coast once thought to be extinct, takes readers deep into the recesses of collective forgetting and offers glimpses of the possibility of recovery. A vivid encounter with lost selves, vanished worlds, and futures yet unrealized, An Anchor in the Sea of Time is perhaps the most personal book yet from this beloved writer.

Author: Stephen Harrigan
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 10/07/2025
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781477333051

About the Author

Stephen Harrigan is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestselling novel The Gates of the Alamo and the award-winning Big Wonderful Thing. Harrigan's work as a journalist and essayist has appeared in many publications, especially Texas Monthly. Harrigan has received several lifetime achievement awards, including the Texas Medal of Arts.