The Green Hill

"Pierce's startling candour makes for tough but cathartic reading, particularly for those who've lost family members too early. The results are both brutal and beautiful" -� Publishers Weekly In 2017, Sophie Pierce's world changed forever when her twenty-year-old son Felix died suddenly and unexpectedly. Thrown into this new reality, she had to find a way to keep on living. By writing a series of letters to Felix - composed during walks and swims taken close to his burial place by the River Dart - Sophie gradually learned how to dwell in the landscape of sudden loss, navigating the weather and tides of grief.The Green Hill�collects these letters alongside Sophie's account of the years following Felix's death, into which she weaves poignant memories of his life. What results is a deeply moving, beautifully captured record of how - amid the plants and rivers of Dartmoor, and in the sea off the South Devon coast - Sophie was able to hold on to and nurture her bond with Felix, both in her mind and through a physical engagement with the landscape: actively mourning, rather than grieving.The book is a celebration of the natural world and the role it plays in our lives and relationships, as well as examining how beauty, a sense of place and the passing seasons can help us contend with our own mortality. Above all, though,� The Green Hill�is one woman's story of navigating through trauma and loss, and towards a fragile, complicated kind of joy.