The Mourner's Bestiary

"Caffall brilliantly parallels her family's suffering with large-scale ecological upheaval, maintaining a flicker of hope for the future in both cases. This deserves a wide readership." ✅Publisher's Weekly Starred Review
Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of two hundred years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy.
A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall's The Mourner's Bestiary is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems-the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound-and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores.
The Gulf of Maine is the world's fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf.