In Her Nature

Oct 8, 2024 12:49 PM

Author:Rachel Hewitt

In Her Nature

**An Economist Book of the Year**

A trail-blazing book about women's fights to access the great outdoors - and a very personal book about how running through the landscape helped the author in her journey from bereavement back to a sense of belonging

'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 used to help her feel at home, but now she becomes painfully aware of her inability to run without being cat-called or followed. She sees injustices facing women in sport, and male bias in competition regulations and media coverage. Running outdoors sharpens her sense of the grief women experience - every day, everywhere - for lack of freedom.

Rachel goes in search of a new family: foremothers at the dawn of outdoor sport. She discovers Lizzie Le Blond, who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts, photographed fearless women skating and tobogganing at breakneck speeds, and founded the Ladies' Alpine Club, defying men who wanted the mountains to themselves. Yet after such groundbreaking progress in the late 1800s, a backlash drove women out of sports and public space.

Are we now living through a similar reversal in women's rights or an era of unprecedented liberty? Telling Lizzie's story alongside her own, Rachel runs her way from bereavement to belonging, in a world that feels hostile to women. On the way she's inspired by the tenacious women, past and present, who insist that breaking boundaries outdoors is, and always has been, in her nature.

Reviews

Fascinating... This is a book of limitless curiosity and eloquent passion

—— The Times

[A] deeply impressive, humane synthesis of scholarship, memoir and rallying cry for women and girls to exercise their right to a place in the world

—— Alex Clark , Guardian *Book of the Day*

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

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

Brave, brilliant and quietly furious, In Her Nature makes a powerful, original case for women claiming space

—— VICTORIA SMITH, author of Hags

Wonderfully well researched, and candidly honest, Hewitt openly discusses topics which are often shied away from… this book is thought provoking and compelling

—— Emily Coates , The Professional Mountaineer

In her Nature reanimates the stories of the past to reveal, brilliantly, the conditions through which women so often have to battle in the present... [it] will make you want to run, and to experience something of the hard-won emotional and physical freedom that Hewitt's prose so movingly evokes

—— DAISY HAY, author of Dinner With Joseph Johnson

A powerful account of women's strengths and achievements in the mountains

—— ANNA FLEMING, author of Time on Rock

A life-affirming book about the thrill of exploring the great outdoors, asking why so many women are excluded from running, hiking and mountaineering. It confronts the obstacles we face every day, including violence, assault and the general assumption that we don't belong here; but In Her Nature proves we have a right to run free

—— NATASHA CARTHEW, author of Undercurrent

An urgent, beautifully written and fiercely important book

—— HELEN CASTOR, author of She-Wolves

With intimate attention and in beautiful prose, IN HER NATURE moves deftly between the inner life and the great outdoors. Rachel Hewitt shows that not only do women have a history as runners, climbers and adventurers; we also have a right to the outdoors that is as crucial - and fragile - today as it ever was

—— SARAH DITUM

A vital feminist memoir of life outdoors, underpinned by the depth of historical knowledge that only a true scholar can bring

—— KATE MALTBY

An extraordinarily compelling book that left me seeing with fresh eyes. Blending expert historical storytelling with piercing memoir, Rachel Hewitt leads the reader over moors and mountains on a grand tour of grief, solitude, camaraderie, and women's long struggle to claim the freedom of the outdoors

—— OLIVER BURKEMAN, author of Four Thousand Weeks

A spectacular achievement... It's beautiful, deeply researched and eye-opening

—— Critic

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