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.
Review Quotes:
"Rebanks's telling of the skilled work and cultural history that he learns from Anna Måsøy is all this otherwise enlightening book needs.'" - Observer
"Rebanks is an extraordinary writer, and The Place of Tides will linger in the mind for a long time." - Sunday Telegraph
"In these 285 thoughtful, beautifully written pages, James Rebanks shows, better than anything I've read recently, the precise quality of the catastrophe befalling the natural world and also what we might begin to do about it. Humane, beautifully paced, gentle, and strangely compelling, The Place of Tides feels like, not only a modern classic, but one we very much need right now." - George Saunders
"A beautiful book about the lives we think we're going to lead versus the lives we actually live." - Paula Hawkins
" The Place of Tides is a magical book, at once a lament for a world in danger of disappearing, and a celebration of an indomitable spirit determined to preserve it. James Rebanks has written a quiet yet ringing masterpiece." - John Banville
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.
Mariner Books
Pub Date: June 24, 2025
ISBN: 9780063434172
1.3" H x 8.3" L x 5.8" W
304 pages
hardcover