Lorraine Duvall writes well about time and place. In her 2020 “Finding a Woman’s Place: The Story of a 1970s Feminist Commune,” she returned to an Adirondack effort by women who rejected America’s traditional patriarchal structure and created their own self-designed identity. The book captures both the spirit and the landscape of the commune.

In “Styles” Duvall again traces history — the families and farms, the seasonal camps, that dotted an area in Jay called The Glen. Duvall writes the area is “surrounded by mountains and treasured for its beauty … where my heart is … home for the last 24 years.”

But “Styles” is not just about history and beauty, it’s an examination of the well-known sought-after balance between “Forever Wild” and development. In his excellent foreward, Philip Terrie writes “Duvall finds the paradoxical but probably inevitable juxtaposition of serenity and tension … how such a paradise can be threatened …”

Duvall focuses on two threats. In 2006, the owners of Highland Farms sought Adirondack Park Agency approval to subdivide 700 acres into 18 building lots on either side of Styles Brook. In response to the proposal, Duvall and her neighbors create Friends of the Glen “to encourage informed and responsible private stewardship, support conservation easements on private property, and advocate for adding to state-protected holdings.”

Duvall and Friends of the Glen work hard to preserve their serene landscape. Lawyers are hired, modifications sought, agreements pursued. But not all their wishes are granted. Still, Duvall told North Country Public Radio, “I’m happy because it could have been worse.” And she is aware of the irony of her efforts: “We’d rather see animals than houses, not acknowledging that we ourselves had encroached on others’ need for privacy.”

The second threat she addresses is one that impacted almost all of us, August 2011’s Hurricane Irene, which reshaped much of the Adirondacks. Duvall describes the damage done in the Adirondacks and the controversial responses to the disaster. The dredging of the AuSable River was proposed, but the AuSable River Association argued that would cause “communities downstream to flood faster and more often.”

As she was in her discussion of the subdivision, Duvall is detailed and fair in her presentation of the complexities of how best to respond to a natural disaster. And she is tireless in attending meetings, gathering information, bringing it to politicians and other decision-makers.

“Where the Styles Brook” is Duvall’s meditation on and exploration of the Adirondack conundrum: how to preserve the glorious landscape while living in it. She writes richly of this beauty, and its fragility.