The New York Times bestseller and International Phenomenon
**One of the Top Ten Books of 2015, Michiko Kakutani, The New York
Times.
**
**"It's bloody marvelous." - Helen Macdonald, New York Times
bestselling author of H IS FOR HAWK
**
"Captivating... A book about continuity and roots and a sense of
belonging in an age that's increasingly about mobility and
self-invention. Hugely compelling." - Michiko Kakutani, The New
York Times
Some people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks'
isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd
himself, his family have lived and worked in the Lake District of
Northern England for generations, further back than recorded history.
It's a part of the world known mainly for its romantic descriptions by
Wordsworth and the much loved illustrated children's books of Beatrix
Potter. But James' world is quite different. His way of life is ordered
by the seasons and the work they demand. It hasn't changed for hundreds
of years: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the
hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the grueling
toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the
light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the
sheep get ready to return to the hills and valleys.
The Shepherd's Life the story of a deep-rooted attachment to place,
modern dispatches from an ancient landscape that describe a way of life
that is little noticed and yet has profoundly shaped the landscape over
time. In evocative and lucid prose, James Rebanks takes us through a
shepherd's year, offering a unique account of rural life and a
fundamental connection with the land that most of us have lost. It is a
story of working lives, the people around him, his childhood, his
parents and grandparents, a people who exist and endure even as the
culture - of the Lake District, and of farming - changes around them.
Many memoirs are of people working desperately hard to leave a place.
This is the story of someone trying desperately hard to stay.
