South Carolina writer Joni Tevis will be in town this Thursday, Oct. 25, to celebrate her first book, The Wet Collection, published by Milkweed Editions.

As a scientist gathers and analyzes her specimens, as an artist interprets and presents them, Tevis offers this collection of essays as the title of her first chapter proposes: “A Field Guide to Iridescence and Memory.” Each entry in this book is a specimen that offers a glimpse into the world as Tevis observes it, with a mix of scientific detachment, poetic imagery, and compassionate imagination. Much like the curator of a scientific collection from which the book draws its name, Tevis is a “secular mystic” who “records the mysteries we’d miss otherwise.”

Some of these essays are mini memoirs. Some, inspired by a visit to an abandoned homestead or a popular historic site, construct the (imaginary) story of someone hidden from history, giving voice to those whose stories were never told. When she visits the Louisiana home of the creator of Tabasco sauce, for example, she “went on the Tabasco factory tour and heard the spiel,” but wasn’t satsified with it; “I don’t think that’s all,” she writes. So she reconstructs the story as it might have been told from his wife’s point of view. “When he claimed that the stars aligned to make him prosper, know she aligned them,” she writes.

Sometimes Tevis moves from reporting to metaphor: the plight of drought-stricken trees becomes that of laid-off workers who become the dry bones of a biblical fable. In fact, a few Old Testament stories find their way into this collection, each given an immediacy and relevance in the telling that leaves no doubt why they are included here.

Then there are chapters filled with delightful snapshots. In “Postcards from Costa Rica,” she describes seeing an iguana fall from a tree; he “shakes his crested head, as if to clear it,” then, “collecting his wits, he slowly (gingerly?) puts one webbed foot in front of the other and stalks away, . . .”

Reading this book is like taking a guided tour of a very lively, eclectic museum with an imaginative, storytelling docent.

The publication party for The Wet Collection, hosted by Milkweed, of course, is Thursday, Oct. 25, 7 p.m., at the Open Book Building, Target Performance Hall, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis. For more information visit www.milkweed.org or call 612/332-3192.