I got this slightly-battered hardcover at this Little Free Library in Hingham, MA while dropping off some books of my own. It opens with an entrancing description of the author's trip to try and see some goshawks in the wild, with lovely (and sometimes grisly) details regarding hawks and their predatory habits. But that first chapter ends on a jarring note when the author learns of her father's sudden death.

And then... things get serious. She falls in to a serious depression, anguished and lost, and finally decides to cope by - training a goshawk! Not quite as out of the blue as it might sound, as she had experience in falconry, but these are the (as she compares them early on) the snow-leopards of the hawk world, beautiful but very, very dangerous and wild.

The author describes her own background with hawks, and includes a harrowing account of author T. J. White's experiences in trying to train one - harrowing on both the hawk's behalf, as the training isn't always very kind, and sometimes on the falconer's behalf, as it's all too easy to lose blood, appendages, eyes...

The author perseveres with her own bird, focusing on it to the exclusion of nearly all human contact, and her descriptions of this time are beautiful and painful. (I admit I peeked ahead in case I had to steel myself for more tragedy {wry grin}.)

It's not all painful, thankfully - there are many scenes of amazing beauty, and the successful flights of the goshawk are magnificent. And when the author's grief begins to lighten and her world opens up again, it feels wonderful...

I'm sending this book to BCer erishkigal in Utah, for the US/Canada wishlist-tag game. Enjoy!

*** Released for the 2017 E-less release challenge. ***

Yay~~it's here!! Thanks, Gory; it may take me a bit to get to it, but this one is definitely jumping the line!