A vegan-turned-hunter reignites the connection between humans and their food sources and continues the dialogue begun by Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver.

As a boy, Tovar Cerulli spent his summers fishing for trout and hunting bullfrogs. While still in high school, he began to experiment with vegetarianism. By the age of twenty he was a vegan. A decade later, in the face of declining health, he returned to omnivory and within a few years found himself headed into the woods, rifle in hand.

Through his personal quest, Cerulli bridges disparate worldviews and questions moral certainties. Are fishing and hunting barbaric, murderous anachronisms? Or can they be respectful ways for humans to connect with nature and food? How harmless is vegetarianism? Can hunters and vegetarians be motivated by similar values and instincts?

In this time of intensifying concern over ecological degradation and animal welfare, how do we make peace with the fact that, even in growing organic vegetables, life is sustained by death? Drawing on personal experience, philosophy, history, and religion, Cerulli shows how America’s overly sanitized habits of consumption have disconnected us from food and nature, resulting in many of the spiritual and environmental crises we now face.