The Salt Stones
Seasons of a Shepherd's Life
Will be published approx. on 17. September 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
978-1-57131-163-4 (ISBN)
Description
Now in Paperback!
Longlisted for the National Book Award
Winner of the Vermont Book Awards
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
Finalist for the New England Book Award
Featured on NPR's Fresh Air and PBS NewsHour
"Revelatory. . . magical. . . Whybrow beautifully explores interconnectedness and disruption in nature."-Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
Set in Vermont's Green Mountains, a profoundly moving meditation on the lessons and wisdom that come from raising a family, tending sheep, and living close to the land.
In the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner set out to restore an old two-hundred-acre farm. Knowing that "belonging requires, more than anything, participation," they begin to intertwine their lives with the land. But soon after releasing a flock of Icelandic sheep onto the worn-out fields, Whybrow realizes that the art of shepherding extends far beyond the flock and fences of Knoll Farm.
In prose both vivid and lean, The Salt Stones offers an intimate and profoundly moving story of what it means to care for a flock and truly inhabit a piece of land. The shepherd's life unfolds for Whybrow in the seasons and cycles of farming and family-birthing lambs, fending off coyotes, rescuing lost sheep in a storm, and raising children while witnessing her mother's decline. Exploring the interdependence of animals, as well as of the earth and ourselves, Whybrow reflects on the ways sheep connect her to place and to the ancient practice of shepherding.
Evocative, affectionate, and illuminating, The Salt Stones sings of a way of life that is at once ancient and entirely contemporary, inspiring us all to seek greater intimacy and a sense of belonging wherever our home place may be.
Longlisted for the National Book Award
Winner of the Vermont Book Awards
A New Yorker Best Book of the Year
Finalist for the New England Book Award
Featured on NPR's Fresh Air and PBS NewsHour
"Revelatory. . . magical. . . Whybrow beautifully explores interconnectedness and disruption in nature."-Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post
Set in Vermont's Green Mountains, a profoundly moving meditation on the lessons and wisdom that come from raising a family, tending sheep, and living close to the land.
In the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains, Helen Whybrow and her partner set out to restore an old two-hundred-acre farm. Knowing that "belonging requires, more than anything, participation," they begin to intertwine their lives with the land. But soon after releasing a flock of Icelandic sheep onto the worn-out fields, Whybrow realizes that the art of shepherding extends far beyond the flock and fences of Knoll Farm.
In prose both vivid and lean, The Salt Stones offers an intimate and profoundly moving story of what it means to care for a flock and truly inhabit a piece of land. The shepherd's life unfolds for Whybrow in the seasons and cycles of farming and family-birthing lambs, fending off coyotes, rescuing lost sheep in a storm, and raising children while witnessing her mother's decline. Exploring the interdependence of animals, as well as of the earth and ourselves, Whybrow reflects on the ways sheep connect her to place and to the ancient practice of shepherding.
Evocative, affectionate, and illuminating, The Salt Stones sings of a way of life that is at once ancient and entirely contemporary, inspiring us all to seek greater intimacy and a sense of belonging wherever our home place may be.
Reviews / Votes
"Spare prose, great storytelling."-Esquire, "Best Books of the Summer 2025""The Salt Stones is a paean to slowing down, observing the world around us more closely, and re-engaging with nature's rhythms and traditional knowledge."-ABC NEWS, "Best Book of the Year"
"Whybrow writes in compelling, finely chiseled prose about the annual seasonal rhythms at her beloved Knoll Farm. . . . The perfect tonic for these turbulent times."-BookPage, starred review
"This beautiful memoir is an exploration of shepherding, relationships, and the big, meaningful questions of life."-BookRiot
"In achingly poetic prose, this forthcoming chronicle of life on a Vermont hill farm captures the familial responsibilities of the shepherd - for animals, parents, children, wild things, and the land upon which we walk for such a brief time."-Rowan Jacobsen, The Week
"Helen Whybrow is a to-the-bone writer, and this is a to-the-bone book-beautiful, real, full of life. You'll reread it."-Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
"Riveting, breathtaking, intensely powerful, The Salt Stones pulses with life. I deeply love this wise and beautiful book about land and belonging, love and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, and so much more."-Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
"In her poetic and provocative offerings on her life as a shepherd to a flock of sheep, Helen Whybrow evokes the spirit that Aretha Franklin brought to her transcendent recording of 'Somewhere.' Read Whybrow. Listen to Franklin. Rejoice!"-Evelyn C. White, author of Alice Walker
"This is a wise and beautiful book. Helen Whybrow calls it 'my love song to this hillside,' speaking of the Vermont farm where, for a quarter century, she has distilled wisdom from the land and its creatures-her family, the birds and trees, the flowers and frogs, a stream of visitors, and flocks of sheep-all of them teaching or seeking ways to live intimately in place. A truly moving book, in prose and spirit, filled with deep insights, rich stories, and memorable scenes, a book to be savored and widely shared."-Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe
"This profound book returns our gaze to forgotten connections with our animal kin, the Earth, and ourselves. Each paragraph shimmers with heart. With Wendell Berry's sensibilities and Robin Wall Kimmerer's poetic insights, Whybrow leads her readers through fertile fields of discovery and knowing. Her sentences, like carefully placed stones, mark the path toward a calm awareness of what true relationships feel like."-Hank Lentfer, author of Raven's Witness
More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Minneapolis
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
ISBN-13
978-1-57131-163-4 (9781571311634)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Helen Whybrow is the author of A Man Apart: Bill Coperthwaite's Radical Experiment in Living and Dead Reckoning: Great Adventure Writing from 1800-1900. She is also the editor of many anthologies, including Hearth: A Global Conversation on Community, Identity, and Place and Coming to Land in a Troubled World. Her writing has appeared in Cagibi, Hunger Mountain, EatingWell, and Orion. She is a visiting professor at Middlebury College and has taught at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference. She lives in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where she shepherds a two-hundred-acre organic farm.
Illustrator Wren Fortunoff grew up farming and loves very long trail runs in the mountains. She has illustrated on paper bags, T-shirts, dead trees, feet, and walls. This is her first book.
Illustrator Wren Fortunoff grew up farming and loves very long trail runs in the mountains. She has illustrated on paper bags, T-shirts, dead trees, feet, and walls. This is her first book.