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  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241401477
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $26.00

The Wild Silence

The Sunday Times Bestseller from the Million-Copy Bestselling Author of The Salt Path




The second instalment to the hugely successful Costa prize shortlister, The Salt Path, and the continued, powerful true story of the couple who lost everything

Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 homeless miles along The Salt Path, living on the windswept and wild English coastline; the cliffs, the sky and the chalky earth now feel like their home.

Moth has a terminal diagnosis, but against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature. Together on the wild coastal path, with their feet firmly rooted outdoors, they discover that anything is possible.

Now life beyond the Salt Path awaits and they come back to four walls, but the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything.

A chance to breathe life back into a beautiful farmhouse nestled deep in the Cornish hills; rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows, becomes their saving grace and their new path to follow.

The Wild Silence is a story of hope triumphing over despair, of lifelong love prevailing over everything. It is a luminous account of the human spirit's instinctive connection to nature, and how vital it is for us all.

  • Published: 1 June 2021
  • ISBN: 9780241401477
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $26.00

Also by Raynor Winn

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Praise for The Wild Silence

Explores the challenge of returning to mainstream life after homelessness

Daily Express, 2020 Hot Reads

A beautiful, luminous and magical piece of writing

Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The Wild Silence confirms Raynor as a natural and extremely talented writer with an incredible way with words. This book gives us all what we wanted to know at the end of The Salt Path which is what happened next. So moving, it made me cry . . . repeatedly

Sophie Raworth

Profoundly moving and emotionally transcendent reading

The List

To follow Raynor Winn on her songline back to Cornwall is to know how it feels to walk yourself into the land you love and find peace at the end of the journey

Brian Jackman, travel journalist for The Sunday Times

Raynor Winn has written a brilliant, powerful and touching account of her life before and after The Salt Path, which, like her astonishing debut, will connect with anyone who has triumphed over adversity

Stephen Moss, author and naturalist

A poignant and passionate, grounded yet uplifting journey of discovery in which we learn what can be found after all seems lost, The Wild Silence is a testament to the transformative power of nature and the fresh hope it nurtures within ourselves

Steven McKenzie, editor of The Big Issue

Winn's soul-baring honesty and beautifully remembered, touching conversations will take your breath away

BBC Countryfile

Intimate in feel and ambitious in scope . . . Throughout it all [Winn] retains her faith in the importance of having an almost visceral connection to the land

Observer

The quality of Winn's writing draws us through the story with the same emotional honesty, lyricism and warmth that epitomises The Salt Path

Resurgence & Ecologist

Moving. A must-read for anyone inspired by The Salt Path . . . another thoughtful memoir

Good Housekeeping

Picks up the story where Winn's astonishing The Salt Path left off

The New European

Heartening and comforting . . . The nature writing is beautiful and it is a thrill to read. You feel the world is a better place because Raynor and Moth are in it

The Times

In this unflinching sequel to The Salt Path, nature provides solace against forebodings of mortality . . . there is a luminous conviction to the prose

Observer

Luminous and touching

Foyles

This sequel sees the pair trying unsatisfactorily to readjust to normal life before finding ways to reharness nature's healing power

Telegraph

Writing with such honesty is a trademark of [Winn's] style

The Marshwood Vale Magazine

'9 new books to read this September'

SheerLuxe

Powerful

Writers Forum

An uplifting, illuminating read

Daily Mirror

Heart-rending. A love letter to the natural world in all its wondrous glory . . . spellbinding

Herald

Deeply personal and spiritual in its exploration of the healing qualities of nature . . . Winn's writing transforms her surroundings and her spirits, her joy coming across clearly in her shimmering prose

i

Raynor Winn's story has become the stuff of legend

Cornwall Life

Full of descriptions of dramatic landscapes that make the reader long for the great outdoors . . . an uplifting and illuminating book

Sunday Express

Beautiful

Herald

Unflinching . . . Another beautifully poignant read about triumph over adversity, and adjusting to life after immense change

The List

'Country Life Book of the Week'

Country Life

This book promises to take you away with the same amazing descriptive and emotive writing found in The Salt Path

David Atherton, Great British Bake Off Winner 2019, Waitrose Weekend

Notions of home are poignantly explored . . . Her evocations of weather, landscape, the sea and her love for her partner, Moth, who has an incurable neurodegenerative condition, are wonderful

Guardian

Written in wise, unflinching, exquisite prose, this is a different kind of journey - into the past, into grief and also into Winn's search for connection. A spiritual journey instead of a physical one, and, for me at least, an even richer one

Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle

Wise, unflinching, exquisite prose

Rachel Joyce

Down to earth yet astonishing . . . touching

This England

So beautifully told

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