Braided Memoirs With a Strong Sense of Place and Focus on Family

This beautifully written, powerful book has received numerous accolades for its genre-bending exploration of grief, falconry, and history. It was once required reading in my MFA program. I love how MacDonald blends nature writing and memoir about grieving the sudden death of their beloved father.

As a new nature writer, I found Lee’s descriptions of Taiwan’s natural history deeply evocative. I loved how she grappled with the gaps in her family history, the way she used her explorations to connect with a foggy past, and her meditations on language, identity, and love.

I’m drawn to this book’s unconventional structure, reflections on childhood relationships, and its focus on home and belonging. I love the idea that remembered spaces could provide portals through which we can reconstruct—or deconstruct—our past, and how places connect to memory.

Rebanks’s prize-winning book about a rural British family farm explores the way a beloved place has changed over the course of three generations, while thoughtfully criticizing modern industrial farming practices. It considers questions of inheritance, what we’ve lost over time, and what our legacy will be when we’re gone. We can’t go back, but there might be a better way forward for our rural landscapes.