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*WINNER OF THE ACKERLEY PRIZE 2023*

‘Here is a writer who knows better than most of us how to live.’ Helen Jukes, author of A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

‘There is just one object I want to carry inside the van… It was believed lightning would not strike a house that held a thunderstone. I place this fossil on the windowsill, its surface gleaming like cat’s eyes ahead of me on a dark road.’

In the wake of a traumatic lockdown, Nancy Campbell buys an old caravan and drives it into a strip of neglected woodland between a canal and railway. There is no plumbed water, no electricity point and the walls are as thin as a Kinder egg. But it is the first home she has ever owned.

As summer begins, Nancy embraces the challenge of how to live well in a place in which possessions and emotions often threaten to tumble, clearing industrial junk from the soil, forging unconventional friendships off-grid and helping the wild beauty surrounding her to flourish. But when illness and uncertainty loom once more, she has to find a way to hold on to beauty and wonder, to anchor herself in this van, this safe space, this shelter from the storm.

An intimate journal across the space of a defining summer, Nancy Campbell’s memoir is celebration of the people and places that hold us when the storms gather; a soul-shaking journey that reminds us what it is to be alive.

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‘The most thoughtful and soothing book I’ve read this year.’ Daily Mail

‘A beautiful and often very funny account of hope and healing in the face of illness and uncertainty.’ TLS

‘How to find beauty and wonder even in the most trying of circumstances’ The Scotsman

‘An uplifting, heart-filled read full of hope and love.’ Lulah Ellender, author of Grounding

Publisher Review

'This raw, honest account of semi-urban caravan life offers a valuable lesson in how to find beauty and wonder even in the most trying of circumstances... [Nancy Campbell] is wonderfully alert to every nuance of every experience, and writes with joyous precision about the summer she sees unfolding all around her.' Scotsman 'A "many-splendoured book, which is at once an after-love, ever-loving letter to her ex; a real-time journal to keep herself company and emotionally intact; a worked-over piece of literary art (Campbell writes beautiful prose) and a rich newcomer to the latest and most exciting department of place writing.' Horatio Clare, Spectator