Dear Reader,
Our guest author today Ben Rawlence, is a former researcher for Human Rights Watch in the horn of Africa. His new book is The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth. The book takes us on a journey of wonder and awe at the incredible creativity and resilience of trees and the mysterious workings of the forest upon which we rely for the air we breathe.
Ben is also the author of City of Thorns and Radio Congo and is the founder and director of Black Mountains College and lives with his family in Wales.
Ben says, "I never set out to become a writer, I just found that I liked doing it and had stories to tell. Now I confess I am addicted. It's a kind of curse, if I don't write, I don't feel good. So I try and write for at least an hour each day."
Ben is giving away three copies of The Treeline. To enter the drawing, send an email with your preferred shipping address to: trademarketing@stmartins.com
Please welcome author Ben Rawlence...
Dear Reader,
You have a heartbeat. Did you know that the planet has one too? In fact it has more than one. The daily pulse of breathing in and breathing out of plants exhaling oxygen and inhaling carbon dioxide, the seasonal pulse of deciduous plants and trees photosynthesizing during the spring and summer and then shutting down for the winter, and lastly, the most amazing and dramatic heartbeat--of ice, rising and falling like a white blanket over the top of the earth every 100,000 years. The ice ages have defined life on earth for millions of years and, each time the ice has retreated north, the forest has followed on its heels, rising and falling, like breath.
And as the lichen, moss, then grass and trees has colonised the rock, the advancing treeline has transformed the surface of the planet into a habitable crust of soil and plants. There is barely a square inch of the northern hemisphere that has not been passed over, and blessed, by the treeline.
I went North, to the Arctic circle, to catch a glimpse of the future where the planet is warming fastest: where the trees are on the move more than ever. I was completely unprepared for what I found. Forests have been shifting north since World War Two, trees are popping up where they have no right to exist and all the other denizens of the forest, including humans, are confused.
The clues to the changes underway and what they might mean for humans and non-humans alike are to be found in the past: the study of rocks, ice and trees. And if we are to find new, more healthy and respectful ways of co-existing on this planet with other species, then we must pay attention to older ways of living in harmony with the forest, ways of life practised by indigenous peoples of the woods the world over.
In The Treeline we meet the Sami people of Norway herding reindeer on the tundra, the Nganasan of Siberia whose lives have been turned upside down first by communism then by its ending, the Koyukon of Alaska who first noticed changes signalled by the birds a century ago and the Anishinaabe of Canada who have confronted the traumatic history of colonialism and in the process created the largest protected enclave of old growth forest in North America.
Trees offer us a warning but also consolation, and in their generous, creative and social, example they show us a way out of the dead end we have driven down. The Treeline is an invitation to take a walk in the woods and participate in the infinite, mysterious and majestic unfolding algorithm that is the co-evolution of all life on earth.
-- Ben Rawlence
Ben is giving away three copies of The Treeline. To enter the drawing, send an email with your preferred shipping address to: trademarketing@stmartins.com
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
TAKING THE LEAP: A River Rain Novel by Kristen Ashley
River Rain is back! Sweeping from the mountains of Arizona, to parties in New York City, the next in the River Rain series, brings on one of my favorite tropes. A bashful woman who's willing to take what she can get and a good man lying to himself about his future, that future being with her. Can Alex and Rix see the possibility and take the leap? I'm giving away five copies, click on the link to Authorbuzz and the book jacket to enter.
Go to: AUTHORBUZZ click on TAKING THE LEAP to read more and to email author Kristen Ashley, you'll get a reply.
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