The Healing House: How Living in the Right House Can Heal You Spiritually, Emotionally, and Physically

by Barbara Bannon Harwood. Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, California, 1997. Paperback, 344 pages, $12.95.

For years, Barbara Bannon Harwood has been a thorn in the side of the National Association of Home Builders and one of the few builders of energy-efficient, passive solar houses in the Dallas area. In keeping with her track record of breaking new ground, Harwood has now given us the first self-help book on green building. And by self-help we don’t mean the how-to-build-it type of book that proliferated in the 1970s. No, as the book’s subtitle suggests, it is true to the self-help genre—with the emotional and spiritual aspects front-and-center.

Readers who are not put off by the touchy-feely style will find that Harwood has also created a valuable resource on the whys and hows of energy-efficient, environmentally responsible home design. With lots of examples and anecdotes, she makes the case for reducing energy use and collecting rainwater just as strongly as she explains the need for less toxic materials and good ventilation. She doesn’t shy away from explaining, for example, that new compact fluorescent lighting doesn’t have the color rendition and flicker problems of older fluorescents, making it a good choice for new homes.

The Healing House is very readable (Harwood was a journalist before she became a builder). While it is not perfect in its explanation of technical details, the book does a great job of explaining the important points for a lay audience. More than any other book we’ve seen, it has the potential to help convince the large population of “New Age” homebuyers to make energy efficiency and environmental responsibility a priority. If it succeeds at this task, it will have provided a valuable service.