A critically-acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness.
"
Caffall brilliantly parallels her family’s suffering with large-scale ecological upheaval, maintaining a flicker of hope for the future in both cases. This deserves a wide readership."
Publisher's Weekly Starred Review
Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of two hundred years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy.
A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall’s
The Mourner’s Bestiary
is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems—the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound—and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores.
The Gulf of Maine is the world’s fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf.
"Beguiling, idiosyncratic [...] Caffall writes with plangent intensity about our responsibility toward the planet, and her eye for the wonder and beauty of ocean life pierces the illusion of disconnected existence." —
Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant judges citation
"Eiren Caffall has produced some of the most powerful writing on the ecological crisis I have read anywhere. Caffall is a gifted writer, and this book is strong medicine." — Naomi Klein, author, social activist, and filmmaker