The astonishing new work of non-fiction from the prize-winning author of Rare Singles, The Gallows Pole and The Offing Under the Rock is about badgers, balsam, history, nettles, mythology, moorlands, mosses, poetry, bats, wild swimming, slugs, recession, floods, logging, peacocks, community, apples, asbestos, quarries, geology, industrial music, owls, stone walls, farming, anxiety, relocation, the North, woodpiles, folklore, landslides, ruins, terriers, woodlands, ravens, dales, valleys, walking, animal skulls, trespassing, crows, factories, maps, rain - lots of rain - and a great big rock. ——- **Shortlisted for the Portico Prize** 'Extraordinary, elemental ... never less than compelling: this is a wild, dark grimoire of a book'TLS 'Exceptionally engaging ... beguiling ... this is a startling, unclassifiable book' Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman 'Compelling ... admirable and engrossing. Myers writes of the rain with a poet's eye worthy of Hughes' Erica Wagner, New Statesman 'A bone-tingling book' Richard Benson, author of The Valley and The Farm 'A truly elemental read from which I emerged subtly changed... It has all the makings of a classic' Miriam Darlington, author of Otter Country and Owl Sense