In Her Nature
- Author Rachel Hewitt
- Narrator Rachel Hewitt
- Publisher Random House
- Run Time 15 hours and 2 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Active outdoor pursuits, Biography and non-fiction prose, Coping with death and bereavement, Family and health, Gender studies: women and girls, History, History of sport, Memoirs, National parks and nature reserves: general interest, Social and cultural history, Society and Social Sciences, Sports and Active outdoor recreation, True stories of heroism, endurance and survival, Women’s health.
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What to expect
Brought to you by Penguin.
'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 and the world, but now she becomes painfully aware of her inability to run without being cat-called or followed by strange men, or to walk alone at night without fear. Her eyes are opened to injustices facing women in sport, from men who push her off paths during races, to male bias in competition regulations, kit and media coverage. The outdoors becomes a place of danger, sharpening her sense of the grief women experience - every day, everywhere - for lack of freedom.
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, a courageous Anglo-Irishwoman who scaled the Alps in woollen skirts, photographed fearless women climbing, 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.
©2023 Rachel Hewitt (P)2023 Penguin Audio
Critics Review
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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
Guardian *Book of the Day* -
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
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
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