Description
by Sheila McEntee
Publication date: 15th of May 2025
In Soul Friend and Other Love Notes to the Natural World, author and naturalist Sheila McEntee artfully conveys her deep love of the natural world and the solace she finds there. In fourteen brief personal essays, spanning 20 years, she explores the flora and fauna in Appalachian forests, on the shores of the southern Potomac River, and, especially, in her own backyard, as she navigates the joys and trials of an introspective life: love, loss, death, loneliness, intimacy, uncertainty, and, ultimately, self-knowing and self-acceptance. In this small volume, we learn that nature teaches resiliency, and to be present to it is to find joy. Indeed, there is no heartache or struggle for which does not offer comfort.
Praise for Soul Friend: And Other Love Notes to the Natural World
With poetic grace, keen insights on the human condition, and a clear reverence for the natural world, McEntee crafts her essays with a sensitivity reminiscent of Mary Oliver and a nimbleness evocative of Joan Didion. Each essay unfolds like a prayer, a testament to the fragile interconnectedness of all living beings. I adored every moment of Soul Friend, and you will, too.
— Nora Shalaway Carpenter, award-winning author of The Edge of Anything and Fault Lines
Reading Sheila McEntee’s collection of essays is the literary equivalent of what the Japanese call “forest bathing.” In unhurried, lyrical language, she guides us through landscapes—and lifescapes—with the intimacy and generosity of a best friend. Soul Friend is a book about nature, but also about human nature. Woven with her observations of birds and wildflowers are explorations of personal-but-universal joys and griefs; gifts and losses; loneliness; love; and flashes of spiritual grace that, like a winter flock of cardinals, alight for a moment and leave a memory fora lifetime. Savor these essays, reader. You will be well rewarded to follow McEntee as she leads you, flower by fern by birdcall, along a path “like a cathedral aisle, green boughs meeting high overhead in a holy embrace.
—Colleen Anderson, author of Bound Stone and Missing: Mrs. Cornblossom
Good writing—and good living—stem from slowing down and paying attention. Sheila McEntee’s essay collection Soul Friend invites us to do just that through her vivid encounters with birds and bears, loneliness and longing, family and friendship. There is joy in this writing, a joy that arises not only out of ease but also pain, not only out of light but also darkness. Which makes each crystalline moment of recognition McEntee frames for us that much more powerful, a meditative practice bearing witness to what’s already there around and within us, asking for relationship. Read this book and watch and wait. You may be surprised at your own soul’s voice calling you forward.
— Jonathan Callard, award-winning writer and teacher (jonathancallard.com)
Soul Friend and Other Love Notes to the Natural World is a poignant blend of natural history and personal reminiscences. It will find avid readers in professional field naturalists and serious bird watchers, as well as casual backyard observers. From a touching piece on the death of her mother to stories of amusing animal antics in her own backyard, the book had me remembering, laughing, and simply enjoying Sheila’s take on the natural world.
—Scott Shalaway, certified wildlife biologist, syndicated columnist, and author of Building a Backyard Bird Habitat
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