About the Author

Linda Hogan, a Chicksaw poet, essayist, and novelist, worked as a volunteer in wildlife and raptor rehabilitation. In 1995 she organized a conference for tribal elders on endangered species and was part of a working group for Native input into the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. Her lifelong area of interest has been the traditional relationship between indigenous peoples and animals. Her books include Dwellings- A Spiritual History of the Living World, Book of Medicines, and Solar Storms.

Deena Metzgerhas lived with wolves for twenty years, writing about them from her home in the Santa Monica mountains. As a poet, writer, and lay analyst, she has devoted her writing and working life to ecological and environmental concerns. Her books includeTree, What Dinah Thought, The Woman Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them,andWriting for Your Life.

Brenda Petersonis author ifNature and Other Mothers, Living by Water,andSister Stories,as well as three novels. She is also an environmental writer and journalist. For the past twelve years she has been studying and encountering dolphins and other whales in the wild. Since 1993 she has covered the wild wolf-from its slaughter in Alaska to its reintroduction in Yellowstone and Olympic National Park. She has written, with Linda Hogan, a series of articles against proposed whaling in the Northwest forThe Seattle Times.

Reviews

"A celebration of compassion . . . Women are opening new ways of communicating with and understanding the animal world."
--The Seattle Times

"IN THIS GROUNDBREAKING BOOK IS FOUND THE COMFORT OF READING OUR OWN HEARTS, OF FINDING OUR OWN FAMILY WITHIN THE VAST UNKNOWN OF OUR EARTHLY HOME."
--NAPRA ReView

"A SPLENDID, MULTIHUED COLLECTION . . . THESE ARE, INDEED, STORIES OF AN INTIMATE NATURE: SENSUOUS, UNSPARING, CAREFULLY MULLED, RAZOR SHARP."
--Kirkus Reviews

"A PHENOMENALLY BEAUTIFUL BOOK."
--The Woman's Journal

This book brings together stories, poems, essays, and meditations by the editors and more than 70 other prominent female nature writers and field scientists, including Gretel Ehrlich, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Tempest Williams, to show how women are reestablishing their relationship with animals on a basis of respect and empathy. Wildlife researchers like Jane Goodall or Cynthia Moss integrate compassion and intuition with the data they report. Native American women explore the wisdom of tribal elders for lessons on sharing the earth with animals. Women who have nurtured or trained individual animals recount, sometimes humorously, how they learned to communicate across the species barrier. All the contributors celebrate animals as our peers on this planet; many also warn against the loneliness and silence of the wasteland we are creating as we push ever more species to the brink of extinction. This collection should appeal to young adults as well as general adult readers. Recommended for academic and public libraries.‘Joan S. Elbers, formerly Montgomery Coll., Rockville, Md.