Unable to forget Anna Masøy, the so-called "duck woman" he met years ago while touring the remote islands of Norway's arctic archipelago, English farmer James Rebanks arranges to spend a summer living with Anna on an isolated sea estate, observing and assisting in her efforts to help Norway's diminishing eider duck population successfully nest and hatch their ducklings, as generations of Norwegians have done before her. "The Place of Tides" is the story of that summer--Anna's last as a duck woman--as she, her friend Ingrid, and Rebanks go through the process of cleaning out the previous year's nests, building and repairing nests for the coming season, waiting for the ducks to arrive and then watching over the birds and cataloguing their eggs until at last the chicks have hatched and safely returned to the sea with their mothers, and the eiderdown from their nests can be harvested and cleaned. This age-old process gives the book the bones of its structure, and Rebanks effectively and often humorously narrates his attempts to understand and master the many steps along the way, but it is Anna's life story, woven into the history of the Norwegian eider duck tradition, that gives "The Place of Tides" its heart. A parallel plot line where Rebanks struggles to find answers to the problems in his own life in the relative quiet and isolation of the island was less successful for me and seemed unnecessary, but luckily it didn't detract from Anna's story, which Rebanks tells with just the right notes of elegiac melancholy for a changing environment and way of life and understated awe for the natural beauty that still remains. A fascinating and rewarding read.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Mariner Books/HarperCollins for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

When I read each one of James Rebanks new offering to the world, I always am reminded how good he is at crafting words together beautifully. It’s a fantastically written book that is almost like a lyric to a song when you read it. Overall a great memoir he puts out and although a slower paced book, i did enjoy this.

I received a free advanced copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.