2021-05-11
The touching memoir of a biologist who befriended a fox in the wilderness.
Raven fled an abusive home at age 15, entering college at 16. Following her passion, she moved to the mountains of Montana, where she worked as a park ranger before earning her doctorate in biology. She built a small cottage in a valley and began leading a solitary life, working for the National Park Service and teaching classes online and in the field. According to the author, she never felt lonely, but she did long to fit in somewhere. One day, she noticed that a fox would show up outside her cottage at the same time each day. Based on her academic training and professional experiences, she had always avoided humanizing wild animals. However, something was special about this fox, and the two soon developed a bond. At first, Raven felt the need to defend their relationship to her colleagues and students, fielding their frequent and targeted questions. She also continually pondered relocating to a city where she could obtain a good-paying academic job with health insurance. But the more time she and the fox spent with each other, the more the author learned about herself and was able to let go of many of the conventional ideas that had been ingrained in her mind by society. With a scientific depth of examination accompanied by lyrical language, Raven explores the development of the bond between the fox and herself as well as the natural habitat surrounding her home, including the responsibilities of landownership. She also includes relevant references from literature that have inspired her views (she also read passages out loud to the fox). As the author charmingly explains, their relationship continued to grow deeper, providing her with a sense of purpose—until a natural tragedy struck her remote area of wilderness, forever altering the trajectory of her life.
A heartfelt meditation on the power of nature and a touching homage to a beloved wild friend.
Mysterious and magical.”—Wall Street Journal
“The book everyone will be talking about… [A] real-life friendship that mirrors the one between Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince and his fox, full of tenderness and understanding.”—The New York Times
“Entrancing…. Raven’s gorgeous account of her bond with a fox while living in a remote cabin will open readers’ eyes to the ways humans connect to the natural world and vice versa. … If there’s one book you pick up this summer, make it this one.”—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
“What emotional vocabulary can express both the joy and the doubts [Raven] experienced devoting copious time and love to a wild creature? This fanciful, literate, unsentimental and yet deeply felt memoir is her answer. … [Raven is] a superb nature writer. … [T]he experience of journeying alongside her as she lives with Fox and meditates about him is extremely rewarding…Fox and I will appeal to those who despair about human depredation of the natural world and sense climate change as the looming, existential threat to life. But Raven’s book isn’t a treatise, it isn’t a call to arms, it isn’t political. Perhaps it is best understood as a plea for understanding. Raven needed Fox: He changed her, made her more comfortable in the world. He showed her that even when padding along under the glorious full moon’s light, it’s better to have someone at your side.”—Clare McHugh, Washington Post
“In this quiet, charming memoir, Raven recounts her journey to accepting this unusual companion.... Throughout, Raven writes about her environment with wonder and reverence but never formality—it’s the easy affection of someone who’s long made family of the natural world.”—BuzzFeed News
“Raven’s extraordinary memoir is a love song to the animal who miraculously arrives in the front yard of her remote cabin every afternoon to be read passages from The Little Prince. A poetic, revelatory portrait of a biologist’s solitary sojourn.”—Oprah Daily
“It’s a familiar story arc: human becomes best friends with a wild animal and life lessons are learned. Yet in biologist and former Glacier National Park ranger Catherine Raven’s hands, the story—of isolation and tender friendship with a wild fox—feels new. …Her memoir reminds us that connection to the natural world comes in many forms.”—Time Magazine
“[Raven’s] reflections shine a spotlight on the path out of loneliness, reminding us all that nature itself will ensure none of us are ever truly alone.”—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
“A soulful and indelible exploration of an interspecies friendship.”—Booklist
“A heartfelt meditation on the power of nature and a touching homage to a beloved wild friend.”—Kirkus
“[An] offbeat and charming memoir. .... Along with reverently describing her furry friend—who had a ‘face so innocent that you would have concluded that he never stalked a bluebird, let alone dismembered one’—Raven writes poetically about the flora (“my sun-worshipping tenants”) and fauna around her. Rich and meditative, Raven’s musings on nature and solitude are delightful company.”—Publishers Weekly
“Fox and I will make you feel deeply about our relationship with animals and nature. After you read this book, you will experience animals in a new and marvelous way.”—Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation
“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 and the fox's friendship charmed me and drew me in completely.”—Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains
“If Thoreau had read The Little Prince, he would have written Fox and I.”—Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
“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.”—Stephen Batchelor, author of The Art of Solitude
“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 story-teller is startlingly original. I read it breathlessly.”—Andrei Codrescu
“Both beautiful and moving, as well as philosophically stimulating regarding the approach to anthropomorphism. I have never read this discourse so well explored before. Normally anthropomorphism is used as a criticism and here it is also played as a defense against reductionist science seeking to ‘other’ creatures from the fellowship of feelings for emotional intelligence. A Thoreau for the new Green Enlightenment.”—Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of The Eden Project
“Fox and I is a mesmerizing, beautifully written, and entirely unsentimental book about the connection among all things: the author and her fox friend, but also magpies, brown dogs, fawns, voles, and junipers. 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.”—Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club
“Utterly Captivating... Beautiful and wise without ever being sappy or manipulative.”—Christian Science Monitor
“Spellbinding … [an] exhilarating, often tense and difficult ride…. Raven has written a book about reading to a fox that I want to read to anyone or anything that cares to listen.”—Alta
