Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING 2024

‘Eye-opening and persuasive’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘Brilliant … I loved it’ KIT DE WAAL

‘Thoughtful, moving, honest’ CAL FLYN

*Winner of The Lakeland Book of the Year 2024*

Work in the countryside ties you, soul and salary, to the land. But often those who labour in nature have the least control over what happens there.

Why have our rural industries been replaced by tourism? Why can’t people stay living in the places they grew up? In this beautifully observed book, Rebecca Smith traces the stories of foresters and millworkers, miners, builders, farmers and pub owners, to paint a picture of the working class lives that often go overlooked. This is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside.

Publisher Review

'A brilliant book about another side of working-class life, not a tower block in sight. Clever and honest, tackling slavery, loss and aspiration with humour and candour. I loved it' Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon 'A wonderful book, beautifully conceived in its movement between different dimensions of a rural working life, Smith's and her family's and all the others, both past and present ... So immediate and clearly seen, so gracefully and gently written ... It is such a valuable thing' Adam Nicolson, author of Life Between the Tides 'A thoughtful, moving, honest book that questions what it means to belong to a place when it can never belong to you ... Timely and illuminating' Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment 'Rural tenderly reveals the precarious lives that underpin the beauty and the wealth of our countryside. Essential reading for lovers of the land and its people' Katherine May, author of Wintering 'A powerful and important elegy to the rural workers who shape and have shaped our landscape and lives, yet remain haunted by precarity. A paean from the heart, Rebecca Smith writes working country lives back into history and gives them a place to dwell, where they often have none. A moving, tender and illuminating portrait' Nicola Chester, author of On Gallows Down 'A vital, questing book about the often misunderstood past, hard present-day, and possible futures of rural life in the UK' Dan Richards, author of Outpost and co-author of Holloway 'Too often, the lives of rural people have been overlooked or else romanticised, especially by writers. Not here ... Warm, astute and sincere' Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees North 'A wonderful debut that has made me rethink the history and geography of our countryside. Highly recommended' Catherine Simpson, author of When I Had a Little Sister