James Rebanks

A National Bestseller

“A modern classic, one we very much need right now.” –George Saunders

From the acclaimed author of 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.

The Place of Tides

Cassandra Tang

Our lives are a series of choices - about what we do, and don't do. Over time we decide what to let go of, what must die, and what we will fight to keep alive. Sometimes these are big, deliberate decisions, other times change happens in a thousand thoughtless little moments. 

Anna reminded me that the first rule of living is to live. To see, hear, smell, touch and taste the world. 

It took a certain kind of person to stay on a duck island in the quiet times, Anna told me. Silence bothered people. They were so used to noise and babbling on that they couldn't wait to fill it.

Human life is full of projection, like we are constantly being filmed in the movie of our own lives. We endlessly shape and reshape our own stories to make ourselves feel relevant or seen - desperate to be the major character. But we don't end up feeling seen, we end up drowning in noise, because everyone else is as desperate to be heard as we are. The world has become a mad shouting match, making us distracted and anxious. 

The island and the wild things are never fully known. There is no end to learning.

A story is rarely as simple as it seems. We are all a bundle of virtues and vices, strengths and flaws, hopes and fears.

I had been searching for a hero, and I found what I'd thought was the most defiant person alive. But instead of a superhero, I had become friends with an ordinary woman who had lived an extraordinary life. 

The Place of Tides quotes

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