The Call to a Wilder Wisdom
Coming October 22nd
During the second spring of the pandemic, writer and naturalist Susan Cerulean came across a weathered wooden desk on a remote, undeveloped beach in north Florida. Left behind by storms and tides, the desk felt less like an accident and more like a message. Cerulean took it as a call—to listen and to write from the point of view of the wild island itself, on behalf of an Earth asking to be heard.
The Call to a Wilder Wisdom is part memoir, part guidebook, and part reflection on what it means to belong to a place. It offers a path to reorient ourselves more closely to the living world, in these unsettled times.
Praise for The Call to a Wilder Wisdom
“The theme of passionate care for wild creatures continues in Susan Cerulean’s remarkable new book, The Call to a Wilder Wisdom. She shows us, through her advocacy of the birds and animals of a particular island off the coast of North Florida, the crucial importance of living in right relationship with all of creation…. It matters that Cerulean is both a musician of language and a skilled scientist: She helps us see what she can see by sharing her great knowledge and essential thinking about the creatures she loves. Through her extraordinary writing she offers us her understanding, vision, and breathtaking devotion.”
—Deena Metzger, American writer, healer, feminist scholar and teacher whose work spans multiple genres including the novel, poetry, non-fiction, and plays
“Part naturalist, part mystic, Cerulean has learned to listen to the wild things, asking them to teach her how we might save wild birds and wild places…. In the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer, this is the book we’ve been waiting for, something to steady us as we face the ravages of climate destruction and our fear of losing the places we love.”
—Jeanne Malmgren, former journalist at the Tampa Bay Times and publisher of the online newsletter Rx Nature
“An intimate telling of one woman’s journey out of the confines of the modern Western culture of domination, desecration, and disconnection. As you read The Call to a Wilder Wisdom, you will step into a great remembering of how to live as a caretaking species in sacred relationship with the natural world. Highly recommended.”
—Erin Geesaman Rabke, writer, teacher and mentor in embodiment in all its forms