{ "item_title" : "The Place of Tides", "item_author" : [" James Rebanks "], "item_description" : "A National BestsellerA modern classic, one we very much need right now. -George SaundersFrom 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 yearWe 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.This unforgettable eco-memoir explores the delicate balance between humanity, nature, and the self.Nordic Travel Writing: A lyrical journey to a windswept Arctic island, where the landscape is as formidable and quietly alive as the woman who tends it.An Ancient Tradition: An immersive look at a centuries-old craft--nearly extinct--and the solitary life required to keep it alive one season at a time.An Unforgettable Friendship: The story of an unexpected bond between a restless writer and a fiercely self-sufficient stranger, forged in her final year on the island.A Meditation on Purpose: A moving exploration of what it means to stop running and find meaning in slowness, hard work, and a life rooted in the wild.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/06/343/417/0063434172_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.99", "online_price" : "28.99", "our_price" : "28.99", "club_price" : "28.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "28.99" } }

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Just shy of the Arctic Circle, Norway’s Vega Islands are stark and elemental, home to otters, sea eagles and a diminishing population of eider ducks. They are also the seasonal home of Norway’s “duck women,” who protect the ducks from predators during nesting season and then gather their eiderdown feathers for human use once the ducks return to the sea. This symbiotic relationship between humans and ducks has persisted for centuries in Norway, only to be in grave danger of vanishing due to modernization and the climate crisis. James Rebanks is an acclaimed writer and shepherd, whose work has previously documented his life on a traditional family farm in England’s Lake District. In his beautiful The Place of Tides, Rebanks leaves the farm, attracted to Norway by a brief meeting years earlier with an elderly duck woman. Apprenticing himself to the no-nonsense Anna and her equally staid assistant, Ingrid, James joins the two women for a season tending ducks on the island of Fjærøy. The fierce, angular beauty of the island and the Norwegian Sea is mirrored by Anna and Ingrid, who initially seem like Norwegian elemental folkloric beings called huldra—tricksters who “tangled fishing lines, hid tools, and caused accidents,” especially targeting men—to James. Anna and Ingrid’s lives are real, however, not mythical, as James discovers over the course of 70 days of hard work tending to the ducks’ seaweed nests. Anna was drawn to the vanishing craft of duck-tending in her 50s, after marriages, child-raising and work. She then reestablished an unprecedented 60 nests on her family’s island of Måsøy and inspired a revival of other traditional duck islands in the Vega archipelago, which is now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The season James joined her was her last, and Anna’s stories are a precious and elegiac harvest from a vanishing way of life. The Place of Tides reminds readers that small acts of care for our environment can result in great things when done over time. Quietly enchanting, this book offers readers an oasis of calm in our turbulent world.