Overview

A critically-acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness. ""Caffall brilliantly parallels her family's suffering with large-scale ecological upheaval, maintaining a flicker of hope for the future in both cases. This deserves a wide readership."" Publisher's Weekly Starred Review Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of two hundred years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy. A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall's The Mourner's Bestiary is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems--the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound--and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores. The Gulf of Maine is the world's fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf. ""Beguiling, idiosyncratic [...] Caffall writes with plangent intensity about our responsibility toward the planet, and her eye for the wonder and beauty of ocean life pierces the illusion of disconnected existence."" ? Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant judges citation ""Eiren Caffall has produced some of the most powerful writing on the ecological crisis I have read anywhere. Caffall is a gifted writer, and this book is strong medicine."" ? Naomi Klein, author, social activist, and filmmaker

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9781955905589

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Reviews

"Beguiling, idiosyncratic: Eiren Caffall makes an original contribution to the growing genre of memoirs that explore illness and healing. The Mourner's Bestiary draws a poetic parallel between the body's experience of chronic disease and the marine ecosystems Caffall knows well--an unexpected juxtaposition that gives new dimension to climate hazards we face and opportunities to address them. Caffall writes with plangent intensity about our responsibility toward the planet, and her eye for the wonder and beauty of ocean life pierces the illusion of disconnected existence. Water becomes an element that draws us together.-- ""Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant judges citation"" ""Eiren Caffall has produced some of the most powerful writing on the ecological crisis that I have read anywhere. By looking at climate change through the lens of her own illness, and through the eyes of her unique son, problems that we so often push away because of the enormity of their size and their apparent distance from daily life suddenly become intimate and human-scale. We can suddenly allow repressed and suppressed truths to enter us, and we are forever changed. Caffall is a gifted writer, and this book is strong medicine."" -- Naomi Klein"

Author Information

EIREN CAFFALL is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV Fire, forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Row House Publishing will release her first book and memoir, The Mourner's Bestiary, in 2024, and her novel, All the Water in the World, is slated for release by St. Martin's Press in early 2025.

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