The Salt Stones

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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!”

“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.”

“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.”