Love, love, love this book! It’s an essential addition to any animal lover’s book collection! Naturalist Sy Montgomery is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, and this wonderful memoir is a collection of homages to animals she’s loved throughout her life – both those she’s lived with as family, and those she’s come to know through research for her books. Included are: a tarantula, an octopus, a weasel, a pig, a pair of kangaroos, and several dogs. She deftly illustrates the singular wisdom and beauty of each of these creatures and discusses the ways they’ve each forever changed her. Hearing her (I listened to the audiobook, which was read by the author) detail the deaths of each of her dogs, and her beloved pig actually made me cry.
The book is one big celebration of the miraculous bond we share with all living beings. After my Rhea died, I searched for books about loss of beloved animals, so that I wouldn’t feel so alone. I found memoirs like Rita Mae Brown’s Animal Magnetism immensely valuable. This is definitely another one of those books that I will always turn to uplift me and remind me of my connection not only to non-human animals, but to other human beings as well.