James Rebanks: The Place of Tides

James Rebanks tells an inspiring story of friendship with an elderly woman, Anna, who worked tirelessly to preserve the centuries-old way of life of the ‘Duck Women’, who gathered the precious down of the Eider duck. He stayed on a remote Norwegian island in the UNESCO listed Vega archipelago, and helped with Anna’s final season of collecting the down. James finds that as the seasons change, what starts as a voyage of escape, ends as a realisation that life is always shaped by the land we live on and the people we live with. This is a story of what it means to have roots, and what happens when you truly find them.

Book   The Place of Tides (Penguin Books)

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Photo credit: Sophie Davidson