Review: A shepherd, a ‘duck woman’ and some surprising lessons about life

English farmer James Rebanks is famous for his books about restoring the health of his Lake Country farm (“Pastoral Song,” “The Shepherd’s Life”). In his third memoir, it is his own health that needs restoring. He is at a low point — his father has died and his work feels futile. He’s frustrated and angry.

“Ours is a dark and chaotic world. We are all in need of lights to follow,” he writes in “The Place of Tides.” For him, that light comes from an unexpected source — an elderly Norwegian “duck woman” named Anna.

Rebanks’ books have focused on his life and farm, and he is well-known for his Instagram posts of cattle and sheep (@HerdyShepherd1), but in this book he sets off for new territory. He spends 10 weeks on a rocky Norwegian island, mostly alone but for the aging duck woman and her apprentice.

He also shifts his focus from himself to Anna, “this island woman twinkling with magic.” Independent and fierce, she spends the spring building and repairing eider duck nests — fashioning stone and wood walls to protect the endangered birds from weather and predators, and gathering and drying seaweed to line the boxes.

After the chicks fledge, she collects and cleans the eiderdown that is left, which is used to make warm duvets.

This is a dying, ancient practice that dates to before the Vikings. “Each nest,” Rebanks writes, “was an act of love.”

Rebanks came to Norway knowing almost nothing about the place. “Everything I knew … could have been written on the side of a cinnamon bun,” he says and, later in the book, he painstakingly describes a strange Norwegian food, “soft, pancake-like things layered with butter, sugar, and cinnamon.” As all Minnesotans know, he is talking about lefse.

During his time on the island, Rebanks watches, learns and helps where he can. As in his previous books, his prose is simple and clear, his depictions of nature gorgeous:

“As I passed over the hill one morning, I heard piping noises all around. I looked up and the sky was full of golden plovers suspended, almost hovering, on the sea wind.”

But it is Anna who is the star. He portrays her as a shapeshifter — at times, so thin that taking her arm “was like getting hold of a heron, tiny and frail,” and at other times more robust than anyone, scrambling across the rocks in her Wellington boots.

Rebanks considers “The Place of Tides” — while nonfiction — to be a sort of fable, and the legends he includes add to that flavor. A mythical creature, a “huldra,” permeates the story. Anna saw the huldra once — a giant woman with long hair — and believed that she helped her when storms destroyed nests Anna had built.

As the spring progresses, Anna’s health improves, and so does Rebanks’. He finds that turning from the modern and toward the traditional is key, embracing the wisdom of centuries and feeling satisfied simply doing what he can. He is inspired by Anna, who works hard to preserve a tradition that might well die out anyway and to save ducks that might well not survive. She does what she can.

This book, and Anna’s life, are inspiring in their simplicity, fortitude and elegance. Her example, Rebanks says, is profound.

“If we are to save the world, we have to start somewhere,” he writes. “We have to show up, day in, day out.”

Laurie Hertzel’s memoir, “Ghosts of Fourth Street,” will be published next year. She teaches narrative nonfiction at the University of Georgia.

The Place of Tides

By: James Rebanks.

Publisher: Mariner Books, 292 pages.