The Green Hill

A deeply moving and beautifully written account of how engaging with the natural world helped a mother through grief following the sudden death of her son

In 2017, Sophie Pierce’s life changed forever when her twenty-year-old son Felix died suddenly and unexpectedly. Thrown into an unimaginable new reality, she had to find a way to survive. By writing letters to Felix – composed during walks and swims taken close to his burial place by the River Dart – Sophie gradually learned how to live in the landscape of sudden loss, navigating the weather and tides of grief.

The Green Hill collects these letters alongside Sophie’s account of the years following Felix’s death, into which she weaves poignant memories of his life. What results is a deeply moving, beautifully captured record of how – amid the rivers and rocks of Dartmoor, and in the sea off the South Devon coast – Sophie was able to hold on to and nurture her bond with Felix, both in her mind and through a physical engagement with the landscape: actively mourning, rather than grieving.

This book is a celebration of the natural world and the role it plays in our lives and relationships, as well as an examination of how beauty, a sense of place and the passing seasons can help us contend with our own mortality. Above all, The Green Hill is one woman’s story of navigating through trauma and loss, and towards a fragile, complicated kind of joy.

'In The Green Hill, Sophie Pierce writes about the sudden death of her son Felix with an aching and gentle honesty. Struggling to come to terms with the loss not only of the young man he was, but everything that he would eventually become, she finds herself overwhelmed not only by grief, but also by love. Her writing is illuminated by a remarkable attention to the beauty and consolation of the natural world, and by the wisdom and tenderness which has been so painfully acquired. This is a book that will be a great comfort to those who need it' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth

'Unforgettable, necessary. This beautiful book is a map, compass and ration of courage for anyone arrived in the landscape of sudden loss. Full of love and learning' Tanya Shadrick

'The Green Hill is an extraordinary book… I thought of the fairy tale in which a captured princess must weave clothes from...read more...