Publisher Review

We 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, building little wooden huts
that will protect the ducks come spring; to the elation of the endless summer
light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for the woman to gather,
like feathered gold.
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not at
all what he had previously thought. As the weeks pass, what began as a journey
of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.