{ "item_title" : "Raising Hare", "item_author" : [" Chloe Dalton "], "item_description" : "NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - FINALIST FOR THE 2025 WOMEN'S PRIZE - A fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman's unlikely friendship with a wild hare.A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, TIME, The Boston Globe, The Economist, Scientific American, SlateMoving. . . . Impart s] valuable lessons about slowing down and the beauty in the unexpected.--USA TodayA perfect testimony to the transformative power of love.--Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of CrowsImagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and bounded around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, more than two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality. In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare--a leveret--that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how difficult it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton's house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, weasels, feral cats, raptors, or even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness firsthand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/370/184/0593701844_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.00", "online_price" : "27.00", "our_price" : "27.00", "club_price" : "27.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "27.00" } }

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As Chloe Dalton will tell you, rabbits of the cottontail, burrow-digging, Easter time variety are far different from hares. The face of the hare is longer, for one, and they are larger. They do not dig warrens but build nests under cover of tall weeds and grass. They are less commonly sighted than rabbits, due both to a preternatural propensity to make swift getaways at the first whiff of anyone approaching and to their shrinking numbers thanks to hunting and habitat destruction. This makes them so difficult to study as a species that, as Dalton embarked on the project of raising the day-old leveret (baby hare) she discovered by the road, she found that her experience of dwelling in close proximity to this small, wild thing frequently disproved the little she was able to find in books about their needs and habits.

Read our Q&A with Chloe Dalton, author of 'Raising Hare.' 

An erstwhile political advisor, Dalton had been cooped up alone in her country home during the COVID-19 pandemic when she found the helpless hare. In her magical, endearing memoir, Raising Hare, Dalton describes this rare experience of spending her days in a deep and unusual intimacy with one of England’s most wary and timid creatures. Reluctant to interfere with the animal’s innate wildness, Dalton hesitates to initiate too much contact with the leveret, or indeed even give it a name. But the tiny animal nevertheless extends its influence over Dalton’s entire world. Dalton’s once jet-setting, busy life takes on the same quiet rhythms of the surprisingly companionable creature. Dalton describes sunlit moments of sitting quietly at her desk with the hare nearby, noticing the minute variation of nature all around her cottage and taking cues from her small friend in the project of slowing down. Her efforts, which include bottle-feeding the neonate, do not result in an adult hare that is tame but rather a wild animal that happens to hold a particular human in high regard. Dalton’s memoir expands on the relatively little knowledge we have about this enchanting species, while also serving gentle commentary on the state of wildlife and the need to preserve their habitats. Lyrical and British in a way that, appropriately, echoes Beatrix Potter, Raising Hare is a sweet and curious meditation on what we gain when we allow the natural world to teach us.