Helen Humphreys

Leaving war-stricken London in 1941, Gwen Davis volunteers for the Land Army in the Devon countryside where she oversees a group of girls who plant crops for the war effort beside a regiment of Canadian soldiers. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

The Lost Garden: A Novel

A lonely boy in a prairie town befriends a tramp in 1947 and then witnesses a shocking murder. Based on a true story. Canwood, Saskatchewan, 1947. Leonard Flint, a lonely boy in a small farming town befriends the local tramp, a man known as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill doesn't talk much, but he allows Leonard to accompany him as he sets rabbit snares and to visit his small, secluded dwelling. Being with Bill is everything to young Leonard--an escape from school, bullies and a hard father. So his shock is absolute when he witnesses Bill commit a sudden violent act and loses him to prison. Fifteen years on, as a newly graduated doctor of psychiatry, Leonard arrives at the Weyburn Mental Hospital, both excited and intimidated by the massive institution known for its experimental LSD trials. To Leonard's great surprise, at the Weyburn he is reunited with Bill and soon becomes fixated on discovering what happened on that fateful day in 1947. Based on a true story, this page-turning novel from a master stylist examines the frailty and resilience of the human mind.

A Novel

Rabbit Foot Bill

In Field Study, award-winning author Helen Humphreys returns to her brilliant illustrated meditations, this time to delve into the lost world of herbarium collections to examine where and how we look to find the solace of nature in a declining natural world.

Meditations on a Year at the Herbarium

Field Study

The devastations of World War II impact a pilot struggling for survival in a German POW camp, his young war bride and his grieving sister. By the award-winning author of The Lost Garden. Original. 15,000 first printing.

The Evening Chorus

And a Dog Called Fig is the story of one writer’s life with dogs (including a frisky new puppy), how they are uniquely ideal companions for building a creative life, and some delightful tales about dogs and their famous writers Into the writer’s isolation comes a dog, to sit beside the chair or to lie on the couch while the writer works, to force them outside for a walk, and suddenly, although still lonely, the writer has a companion. An artist’s solitude is a sacred space, one to be guarded and kept apart from the chaos of the world. This isolation allows for uninhibited wandering, uninterrupted meditation, and the nurturing of sparks of inspiration into fires of creation. But in the artist’s quiet there is also loneliness, self-doubt, the possibility of collapsing too far inward. What an artist needs is a familiar, a creature perfectly suited to accompany them on this coveted, difficult journey. They need a companion with emotional intelligence, innate curiosity, passion, energy, and an enthusiasm for the world beyond, but also the capacity to sleep contentedly for many hours. What an artist needs, Helen Humphreys would say, is a dog. And a Dog Called Fig is a memoir of the writing life told through the dogs Humphreys has lived with and loved over a lifetime, culminating with the recent arrival and settling in of Fig, a Vizsla puppy. Interspersed are stories of other writers and their irreplaceable companions: Virginia Woolf and Grizzle, Gertrude Stein and Basket, Thomas Hardy and Wessex—the dog who walked the dining table at dinner parties, taking whatever he liked—and many more. A love song to the dogs who come into our lives, and all that they bring—sorrow, mayhem, meditation, joy—this is a book about companionship and loss, creativity and the writer’s craft, filled with the beauty of a steadfast canine friend and the restorative powers of nature. Just as every work of art is different, every dog is different—with distinctive needs and lessons to offer. If we let them guide us, they, like art, will show us many worlds we would otherwise miss. Includes Black-and-White Photographs

Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life

And a Dog Called Fig

Inspired by the life of Julia Margaret Cameron, Afterimage is the bold and provocative story of Annie Phelan, a maid in the home of Isabel and Eldon Dashell. Isabel is experimenting with the new medium of photography, and is inspired by Annie, who becomes her muse. The two form a close relationship, but when Eldon devises his own plans for the young maid, Annie nearly loses herself, until disaster reveals her power over the Dashells’ work and hearts.

Afterimage

A novel as wise as it is tender, a meditation on the miracle of friendship and the heartbreak of change, Followed by the Lark inhabits the life of Henry David Thoreau. Composed in small scenes, Followed by the Lark is a novel of meditations—on loss, on change, on the danger and healing that come from communion with the natural world. Henry David Thoreau's connection to nature was tied to his feelings of grief; before he was twenty-seven years old and went to live at Walden Pond, two of those closest to him had died—his older brother, John, and his friend Charles Wheeler. Nature provided solace for these losses, but the world was changing around him. The forests were being destroyed by the logging industry. Wildlife was increasingly slaughtered for profit and sport. The railroad clanged through his quiet hometown. And the catastrophes of the American Civil War were beginning to stir just as his own life was coming to an end. Haunting in its quiet spaces, in the way it imagines the missed connections in his relationships, Followed by the Lark is uncommon in its combination of scope and brevity, in its communion with its subject while still maintaining critical distance. Thoreau’s life in the early nineteenth century seems firmly in the past, but his time bears striking similarities to ours. As she explores these intersections in Followed by the Lark, Helen Humphreys elegantly, insistently illustrates how Thoreau’s concerns are still, vitally, our own.

Followed by the Lark

Coventry

When Charles Saint-Beuve, a French literary journalist met Victor Hugo, an ambitious young writer who intended to become famous, he was swept into a world of grand emotions, a world where words can become swords. But it is not Victor he is really attracted to - it is his wife Adele. Soon the two lovers are on the edge of a great scandale and a wounded Victor must exact his price for betrayal, a price that will change the lives of many, including his own children. As Saint-Beuve - a man like no other man - struggles to hold on to what is left of his great love, he finds that only words can rekindle the flame. Set during the tumultuous reign of Napoleon III, this mesmerising novel draws a rich portrait of old Paris, where duels were fought and cholera-ridden bodies float in the Seine. Towering over all is the genius of Victor Hugo, already the voice of France, eventually banished to the island of Guernsey for his opposition to the regime. In contrast come the quieter voices of two women destroyed by Hugo's ferocious literary ambition as well as the unique, acerbic and heart-breaking voice of the critic and essayist, Saint-Beuve, first Hugo's friend and then his unlikely competitor in love. An atmospheric story of delicacy and emotion, of the experience of professional jealousy and personal passion, The Reinvention of Love is an outstanding piece of fiction writing, in part about writing itself.

The Reinvention of Love

Cani selvaggi

When her dog joins a feral pack after being abandoned by her boyfriend, Alice and five companions gather in the evenings by the edge of a forest, trying to call the dogs back into domesticity, in a tale that traces the experiences of each former dog owner and finds Alice moving to a cabin and falling in love with a wildlife biologist. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.

Wild Dogs: A Novel

On the evening of November 14, 1940, Harriet stands on the roof of the cathedral in the British town of Coventry and marvels at the magnificence of frost glittering beneath a full moon. But it is a bomber’s moon. The Germans are coming to unleash destruction. For Harriet, Jeremy, the young man who shares her duties as a firewatcher, and his free-spirited mother, Maeve, this single night will resonate for the rest of their lives. In a story of breathtaking beauty, with the wondrous poetic style that has earned her international acclaim, Helen Humphreys recreates the terror of the infamous Second World War bombing raid on Coventry. As Harriet and Jeremy make their way through the burning city in search of Maeve, their trek becomes a journey of fear and awe as they witness butter from the dairy flowing down the streets in a burning stream and landmines on parachutes swimming like jellyfish out of the darkness. Cold dread brings to life both a grief and a love that Harriet thought she had put behind her forever. Drawing on actual events of that horrific night in 1940, Coventry is an astounding work, at once tense and lyrical, shocking and exquisite. Touching on themes of love, loss, loneliness and remembrance, Humphreys has crafted a story that will seize readers’ hearts and imaginations.

In its long history, the River Thames has frozen solid forty times. These are the stories of that frozen river. And so opens one of the most breathtaking and original works being published this season. The Frozen Thames contains forty vignettes based on events that actually took place each time the river froze between 1142 and 1895.

The Frozen Thames

From the bestselling author of The Reinvention of Love, a heartbreaking memoir of grief and a profound examination of the meaning of life. Helen Humphreys' younger brother was gone before she could come to terms with the fact that he was terminally ill. Diagnosed with stage 4B pancreatic cancer at the age of forty-five, he died four months later, leaving behind a grieving family. Martin was an extraordinary pianist who debuted at the Royal Festival Hall in London at the age of twenty, later becoming a piano teacher and senior examiner at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The two siblings, though often living far apart, were bonded on many levels. Now Humphreys has written a deeply felt, haunting memoir both about and for her brother. Speaking directly to him, she lays bare their secrets, their disagreements, their early childhood together, their intense though unspoken love for one another. A beautifully articulated testament to the power of human connection, this poetic, candid and intimate book is an offering not only to the memory of Martin but to all those who are living through the loss of family and friends.

On the Life and Death of My Brother

Nocturne

Notturno

For readers of H is for Hawk and The Frozen Thames, The Ghost Orchard is award-winning author Helen Humphreys’ fascinating journey into the secret history of an iconic food. Delving deep into the storied past of the apple in North America, Humphreys explores the intricate link between agriculture, settlement, and human relationships. With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlantic Ocean with a relatively unknown Quaker woman long before the more famed “Johnny Appleseed”; how bountiful Indigenous orchards were targeted to be taken over or eradicated by white settlers and their armies; how the once-17,000 varietals of apple cultivated were catalogued by watercolour artists from the United States’ Department of Pomology; how apples wove into the life and poetry of Robert Frost; and how Humphreys’ own curiosity was piqued by the Winter Pear Pearmain, believed to be the world’s best tasting apple, which she found growing beside an abandoned cottage not far from her home. In telling this hidden history, Humphreys writes movingly about the experience of her research, something she undertook as one of her closest friends was dying. The result is a book that is both personal and universal, combining engaging storytelling, historical detail, and deep emotional insight.

The Ghost Orchard

A story with an enchanting tapestry of characters and rich imagery, Where the characters gather each evening in an attempt to call their runaway dogs home from the forest.

Wild Dogs

On the night of the Luftwaffe's devastating bombing of Coventry, two women traverse the city and transform their hearts.

Helen Humphreys’ younger brother was gone before she could come to terms with the fact that he was terminally ill. Diagnosed with stage 4B pancreatic cancer at the age of forty-five, he died four months later, leaving behind a grieving family. Martin was an extraordinary pianist who debuted at the Royal Festival Hall in London at the age of twenty, later becoming a piano teacher and senior examiner at the Royal Conservatory of Music. The two siblings, though often living far apart, were bonded on many levels. Now Humphreys has written a deeply felt, haunting memoir both about and for her brother. Speaking directly to him, she lays bare their secrets, their disagreements, their early childhood together, their intense though unspoken love for one another. A beautifully articulated testament to the power of human connection, this poetic, candid and intimate book is an offering not only to the memory of Martin but to all those who are living through the loss of family and friends.

In her third book of poetry The Perils of Geography, Helen Humphreys charts a world that opens under the prodding and promise of language. With the wit and eye for evocative detail which gained readers for both Gods and Other Mortals and Nuns Looking Anxious, Listening to Radios, Humphreys probes the immediacy of now, the intensity of this, the residue of then. Don't be deceived by the spare appearance; her poems are resonant and full, "all angles and confidence." Light falls slant across them. She maps "what surrounds not what's made still" - "the moving line." The line she traces connects the pull of memory and moment, open roads and winter aconite, transcendental basements and ornamental shrubbery. In "Singing to the Bees," the ten poem sequence which makes up the second of three sections in Perils, she slips inside folk wisdoms, wears them with an easy grace, all flesh and wit and possibility: dancing shoes, gifted pigs, swarming bees, airplane nuns and spectre ships. These poems make superstition delicious.

Helen Humphreys

About

Books

Join the club