The Mourner's Bestiary

A critically-acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness.

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.

"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