The significance of the ordinary shines through the pages of The Place of Tides. You sit and listen, taste and smell, and feel the small home on the island through Anna's eyes, those of “the duck woman.” This book forces you to slow down to a pace unrecognizable to most of our modern brains.

James Rebanks travels to spent time on a remote Norwegian island to learn from their inhabitants who care for the wild eider ducks. Preserving tradition, they spend day after day caring for the eggs and their nests.

Rebanks bottles up the essence of a place through its flora and fauna, their elaborate and peaceful breakfasts, and their hard, long days at work. And through the purposefulness of their work, he ponders how much he misses his simple life at home, which Anna applauds him for doing.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Mariner Books/HarperCollins for the advance copy in exchange for a review.

Readers of memoir and biography will sink into the world of The Place of Tides instantly. Rebanks brings Anna, a Norwegian eider down harvester, and her world to vivid life from the first page. Himself a son of farmers, Rebanks's time with Anna is rich with the memories, the hands-on wisdom, and the deep roots of ways of life that seem to be dying in our increasingly industrialized and digitally controlled world. The Place of Tides is a gift to all of us who knows and wish to sustain the joys and experiences of "real work" and it's relationship to the earth.

I can't say enough good things about this book, and yet, I don't want to say much at all. It's better to go in with no expectations and to experience the magic that is this story. In these pages you'll meet a woman in the later season of her life who has opened herself up to share her world, both past and present, with not only the author but also his countless readers. It's a story of her courageous effort to keep the eiderdown gathering tradition alive, and it's plenty informative and fascinating in that aspect alone, but it's so much more than that. It's a story of resilience and self-sufficiency but also of community and the connected nature of everything. And the author immerses himself fully, choosing to participate and to glean whatever knowledge and wisdom he can rather than to report from the sidelines. Through his experience, we, too, can challenge ourselves to hear and to understand the important things the life of one extraordinary duck woman has to tell us.

Just south of the Arctic circle, on the west coast of Norway, lies the Vega Archipelago. It was here, about a decade ago, that James Redbanks, author of The Place of Tides, was sent on a work assignment. During a field trip as part of his work assignment, he first met Anna, a “duck woman”, guardian of an eider duck island.
To James, Anna came to represent defiance, freedom and the potential for an alternative life, and seven years after first meeting her, he wrote her a letter to ask if he could join her on the island for duck season. This book tells the story of that time—of life on a remote island, harvesting down, weathering storms, and learning how to be still.
I’m sure many of us haven’t really thought much about where eiderdown comes from—and this book answers that, but gently. More than that, it’s a quiet meditation on solitude, wildness, and finding meaning in rhythm and repetition. It goes further, however, and ultimately it’s a story of finding your people, friendship and the importance of connection.
Redbanks writes with grace and warmth. He doesn’t romanticize the hard bits, but he honors the simplicity of island life. If you enjoy nature writing, memoirs of quiet adventure, fantasies of running away to a remote island yourself, or books that invite you to consider what really matters, this one is for you. It’s the kind of story that lingers.
Thank you Mariner Books for providing an advance content copy of this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

The Place of Tides is a beautifully introspective and poignant read that took me by surprise. James Rebanks masterfully weaves together the story of his journey to a remote Norwegian island to help an elderly woman during her last season caring for wild Eider ducks. The way he captures the rugged, almost otherworldly landscape makes you feel like you’re right there with him, experiencing the harsh winters and the fleeting beauty of summer. The woman at the center of the story is fascinating – fierce, resilient, and deeply connected to the land and her work. Rebanks’ curiosity and eventual understanding of her world are both moving and thought-provoking.

What I loved most about this book is how it slowly shifts from being an exploration of a place and a tradition to a deeper reflection on life, purpose, and forgiveness. There’s a quiet, meditative quality to Rebanks’ writing that perfectly complements the solitude of the island. It’s not just a story about the woman and the ducks; it’s about confronting your own assumptions and finding meaning in unexpected places. If you’re looking for a book that’s both soulful and beautifully written, The Place of Tides is definitely worth your time.

Beautiful and evocative, and so fascinating I ended up reading many portions aloud to whoever was close enough to listen!

Unable to forget Anna Masøy, the so-called "duck woman" he met years ago while touring the remote islands of Norway's arctic archipelago, English farmer James Rebanks arranges to spend a summer living with Anna on an isolated sea estate, observing and assisting in her efforts to help Norway's diminishing eider duck population successfully nest and hatch their ducklings, as generations of Norwegians have done before her. "The Place of Tides" is the story of that summer--Anna's last as a duck woman--as she, her friend Ingrid, and Rebanks go through the process of cleaning out the previous year's nests, building and repairing nests for the coming season, waiting for the ducks to arrive and then watching over the birds and cataloguing their eggs until at last the chicks have hatched and safely returned to the sea with their mothers, and the eiderdown from their nests can be harvested and cleaned. This age-old process gives the book the bones of its structure, and Rebanks effectively and often humorously narrates his attempts to understand and master the many steps along the way, but it is Anna's life story, woven into the history of the Norwegian eider duck tradition, that gives "The Place of Tides" its heart. A parallel plot line where Rebanks struggles to find answers to the problems in his own life in the relative quiet and isolation of the island was less successful for me and seemed unnecessary, but luckily it didn't detract from Anna's story, which Rebanks tells with just the right notes of elegiac melancholy for a changing environment and way of life and understated awe for the natural beauty that still remains. A fascinating and rewarding read.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Mariner Books/HarperCollins for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

When I read each one of James Rebanks new offering to the world, I always am reminded how good he is at crafting words together beautifully. It’s a fantastically written book that is almost like a lyric to a song when you read it. Overall a great memoir he puts out and although a slower paced book, i did enjoy this.

I received a free advanced copy of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.