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A Journey into the Wild and Secret World of Owls
One minute I was sipping my tea by the window. There was nothing but the palest edge of grey light and a wisp of steam from my cup―and then a shadow swooped out of the air. With the lightest of scratches, as if the dawn light was solidifying into life, there it was, perched like an exclamation mark on the balcony: an owl, come to my home.
Owls have existed for over sixty million years, and in the relatively short time we have shared the planet with these majestic birds they have ignited the human imagination. But even as owls continue to captivate our collective consciousness, celebrated British nature writer Miriam Darlington finds herself struck by all she doesn't know about the true nature of these enigmatic creatures.
Darlington begins her fieldwork in the British Isles with her teenage son, Benji. As her avian fascination grows, she travels to France, Serbia, Spain, Finland, and the frosted Lapland borders of the Arctic for rare encounters with the Barn Owl, Tawny Owl, Long-eared Owl, Pygmy Owl, Snowy Owl, and more. But when her son develops a mysterious illness, her quest to understand the elusive nature of owls becomes entangled with her search for finding a cure.
In The Wise Hours, Darlington watches and listens to the natural world and to the rhythms of her home and family, inviting readers to discover the wonders of owls alongside her while rewilding our imagination with the mystery, fragility, and magnificence of all creatures.
"Nature writing and memoir make a winning mix in this lyrical survey of owl species from poet Darlington... Fans of Jon Dunn's The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds should check out this dazzling account." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An invigorating dive into the world of owls. In a smooth mixture of memoir and nature writing, Darlington, author of Otter Country, does for owls what Rebecca Giggs did for whales in Fathoms... Heartfelt, enchanting, and beautifully written." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A beautiful book; wise and sharp-eared as its subject." - Robert Macfarlane
"Darlington brings humor, humility, and a refreshing subjectivity to her quest to understand these charismatic creatures." - Melissa Harrison, author of All Among the Barley
This information about The Wise Hours was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Miriam Darlington was born and brought up in Lewes, Sussex. She has lived in London, in France, and for five years she lived on St Mary's on the Isles of Scilly. She is now settled with her family in Devon, England. She was a school teacher until she escaped and became a writer in 2008. As well as being a full-time author, she teaches Creative Writing at Plymouth University.
Miriam's first collection of poetry, Windfall, was published in 2008. In 2009 on a fully-funded Creative and Critical PhD at Exeter University she produced Otter Country, In Search of the Wild Otter, a travel and nature memoir. A critical and contextual ecocritical study of nature writing completed her PhD in September 2013.
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