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by James Rebanks
From perhaps the preeminent nature writer of our time and the acclaimed author of Pastoral Song and The Shepherd's Life, a magical work of nonfiction in which James Rebanks reflects on a life-changing summer spent on a remote island off the coast of Norway, where his only companion was an old woman who practiced the ancient tradition of collecting eiderdown from birds that nest on this remarkable landscape each year.
We are all in need of lights to follow.
One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.
Back at home, Rebanks couldn't stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly—and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.
"A quietly profound book. It is a story about a still-essential way of living in the modern world and finding a way to keep going. It is also a deft travelogue to one of the world's wildest seascapes... . [Rebanks's] assured narrative paints a picture of a wondrous world. It is one that few of us will ever visit but are all the better for knowing about." —The Sunday Times
"Lyrical and enchanting ... Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." —The Telegraph
"A fable-like tale, as beautiful and elusive as the idea of home and self it seeks to recover." —Richard Flanagan, Booker Prize–winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North
"A spellbinding story of wildness, healing, and nature. A message we all need to hear, told with immense honesty and vulnerability. Magical!" —Julius Roberts, author of The Farm Table
This information about The Place of Tides 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.
James Rebanks is a farmer based in the Lake District, where his family have lived and worked for over six hundred years. A graduate of Oxford University, James is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Shepherd's Life, and Pastoral Song.
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There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
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