The Salt Stones

“Spare prose, great storytelling.”—Esquire, ""Best Books of the Summer 2025""  ""Revelatory. . . magical. . . Whybrow beautifully explores interconnectedness and disruption in nature.""—Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post  “Beautiful . . . Whybrow's prose is alive. In witnessing the hard but simple work of shepherding these animals, readers will feel themselves somehow tended to.”—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe  ""Whybrow writes in compelling, finely chiseled prose about the annual seasonal rhythms at her beloved Knoll Farm. . . . The perfect tonic for these turbulent times.""—BookPage, starred review “In achingly poetic prose, this forthcoming chronicle of life on a Vermont hill farm captures the familial responsibilities of the shepherd — for animals, parents, children, wild things, and the land upon which we walk for such a brief time.”—Rowan Jacobsen, The Week “Helen Whybrow is a to-the-bone writer, and this is a to-the-bone book—beautiful, real, full of life. You’ll reread it.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “Riveting, breathtaking, intensely powerful, The Salt Stones pulses with life. I deeply love this wise and beautiful book about land and belonging, love and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, and so much more.”—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood “In her poetic and provocative offerings on her life as a shepherd to a flock of sheep, Helen Whybrow evokes the spirit that Aretha Franklin brought to her transcendent recording of ‘Somewhere.’ Read Whybrow. Listen to Franklin. Rejoice!”—Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker “This is a wise and beautiful book. Helen Whybrow calls it ‘my love song to this hillside,’ speaking of the Vermont farm where, for a quarter century, she has distilled wisdom from the land and its creatures—her family, the birds and trees, the flowers and frogs, a stream of visitors, and flocks of sheep—all of them teaching or seeking ways to live intimately in place. A truly moving book, in prose and spirit, filled with deep insights, rich stories, and memorable scenes, a book to be savored and widely shared.”—Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe “This profound book returns our gaze to forgotten connections with our animal kin, the Earth, and ourselves. Each paragraph shimmers with heart. With Wendell Berry’s sensibilities and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s poetic insights, Whybrow leads her readers through fertile fields of discovery and knowing. Her sentences, like carefully placed stones, mark the path toward a calm awareness of what true relationships feel like.”—Hank Lentfer, author of Raven’s Witness