Halpern, Jake. Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales. Mariner, 2004. ISBN 978-0618446629 256 pp. $

****

If home is where the heart is, then what ties to a person to a certain physical space, especially when that place has been destroyed by natural or man-made disaster? The author travels to some interesting places (a flood plain town swept away by water, a house on lava fields) to interview individuals making a stand to stay in a near-uninhabitable place they call home.

This is fascinating armchair travel that also raises issues of retribution and isolation as well as home.