A captivating tale of a unique friendship between two different species, and of an individual who turns to nature when society ceases to make sense.
A tender, shrewd exploration of the redemption that comes when we start to know that we, whoever and wherever we are, are wild things, crucially defined by our relationship with the wild.
A
wise and intimate book about a solitary woman, a biologist by training, who befriends a fox. More than that, it's the tale of a human mind trained to be logical being touched by nature and coming to realize a greater truth. If Thoreau had read
The Little Prince, he would have written
Fox and I.
A smart and tender memoir of an unexpected bond between a biologist and a fox...
Fox & I crisply upends the hierarchy that places humans at the top of a pyramid.
Intimate and poetic . . . . By paying ecstatic attention to grasses, insects, birds, and animals, Catherine Raven allows us to hear what nature is saying to us.
Fox and I is essential reading for anyone concerned about the catastrophe human beings are inflicting on the environment from which they and all other creatures sprang.
This tale of wilderness, in the tradition of Thoreau and Steinbeck, is distinguished by a narrator who sees herself as one of the many creatures she lives among . . . . Catherine Raven has achieved something unique in the literature of nature-writing: genuine love for the wild within the rigor of scientific observation. The voice of this storyteller is startlingly original. I read it breathlessly.
The observations of high-desert nature -- of wildlife, plants, landscapes, weather -- in this book are some of the best you will ever read. The story of Catherine Raven's and the fox's friendship charmed me and drew me in completely.
Fox and I is a
mesmerizing, beautifully written, and entirely unsentimental book about the connection amongst all things: the author and her fox friend, but also magpies, brown dogs, fawns, voles, and junipers. Catherine Raven helped me reorient myself in the universe; she encourages readers to stop, listen, and look at the landscapes around us without putting ourselves in the center of them. I learned as much about the meaning of friendship from this book
as I have from any work of nonfiction that I've ever read.
Catherine Raven received her Ph.D. in biology from Montana State University and is a former National Park Ranger at Glacier, Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Yellowstone National Parks. Her natural history essays have appeared in
American Scientist and
Montana Magazine. A member of American Mensa and Sigma Xi, she is currently a Professor at South University in Savannah, Georgia.