Reeling from the sudden death of her father, naturalist Helen Macdonald does something wild: she buys and trains a goshawk, one of the fiercest and most difficult birds to handle, and names her Mabel. As she disappears into the hawk's world to escape her own grief, Macdonald weaves in the story of author T.H. White and his own troubled attempt at falconry decades earlier.

The result is a raw, luminous memoir about loss, obsession, wildness and the slow work of finding your way back to being human.