In Her Nature
How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:14th Mar '24
Should be back in stock very soon

'Heartfelt, passionate, infuriating and often devastating, this book will inspire you to fight for your right to tread your own path' CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ, author of Invisible Women
When Rachel loses five family members in five months, grief magnifies other absences. Running across moors and mountains used to help her feel at home in her body but now feels fraught with danger.
Rachel goes in search of a new family: the foremothers who blazed a trail at the dawn of outdoor sport. She discovers Lizzie Le Blond who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts and photographed fearless women climbing, skating and tobogganing at breakneck speeds. Telling Lizzie's story alongside her own, Rachel runs her way from bereavement to belonging, inspired by the tenacious women, past and present, who insist that breaking boundaries outdoors is, and always has been, in her nature.
‘A book of limitless curiosity and eloquent passion’ The Times
An urgent tale of survival and subversion * Economist, *Books of the Year* *
Deft, absorbing and informative * Times Literary Supplement *
Informative, essential reading on women's mountaineering wrapped within a profoundly personal memoir. There is joy amid the anger and hurt Rachel conveys on her journey of personal recovery through recovering the stories of her newfound outdoors foremothers. I'm sure many women will feel seen in these pages. The peaks of joy, the lessons learned during the lows, and the rallying cry for our right to feel safe outdoors will stay with me -- Francesca Donovan * The Great Outdoors Magazine *
A highly original work… Quietly angry and fiercely feminist, it’s the book I’ve been encouraging everyone to read * Critic, *Books of the Year* *
Rachel Hewitt's writing is always elegant, fierce, intelligent and truthful. No one writes as well as she does about endurance - and survival * HELEN LEWIS, author of Difficult Women *
A book of courage, grief, anger, wisdom and fortitude. It demands our attention * HERMIONE LEE, author of Virginia Woolf *
An urgent, powerful, inspiring book about women making a space for themselves in the macho world of outdoor pursuits-one that reflects on what we risk and what we gain by turning our faces to the wind * CAL FLYN, author of Islands of Abandonment *
Insightful, compelling, and rightfully outraged, In Her Nature brilliantly reclaims the hidden histories and contemporary experiences of women running, hiking, climbing, and taking up space in the world. An essential read, as well as a moving, revealing, and empowering one * JON MCGREGOR, author of Reservoir 13 *
This astonishingly brave, deeply important and emboldening book offers hope and encouragement for women to find freedom and solace in the joyous expanse of the natural world * HELEN CARR, author of What is History, Now? *
A stunning, raw and powerful book - about grief and putting ourselves back together, about freedom and the fight for it, and about strength and the hunger to test it * TIFFANY WATT-SMITH, author of The Book of Human Emotions *
ISBN: 9781529920055
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 32mm
Weight: 416g
528 pages