In this literary memoir, poet and essayist Michael Heller interweaves family and personal history with reflections on language, poetry, religion, and memory itself.

Living Root is the story of an education, a writer's wandering through personal and family history, through texts and traditions. Recalling his family's origins in Bialystok as well as his own childhood in Brooklyn and Miami Beach, poet and essayist Michael Heller creates a rich mosaic of reflections on his past, his origins, and the entanglements of thought and religion that have shaped his life and writing. Living Root enlarges the memoir genre, vividly illuminating the interactions of memory, autobiography, and the evolving creative self.