The Ghost Lake

The Ghost Lake is a deeply personal, lyrical, and stirring meditation on local history and changing landscapes that intertwines nature writing with an exploration of grief, belonging, and the lives and legacies of rural working-class people.

Format: Hardback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 15 August 2024
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

The Ghost Lake is a deeply personal, lyrical, and stirring meditation on local history and changing landscapes that intertwines nature writing with an exploration of grief, belonging, and the lives and legacies of rural working-class people. Wendy Pratt takes the reader on a pilgrimage around the ghost lake, to locations that have acted as journey markers in her own life. She reflects on the process of finding belonging in nature as a woman who exists in a series of liminal spaces – as a working-class writer, an infertile woman in a fertile world, and a bereaved mother in a society focused on children. An early draft of The Ghost Lake was longlisted for the 2021 Nan Shepherd Prize. "In this lyric memoir, award-winning poet Pratt explores the landscape of the Yorkshire Moors and the ancient lost lake of Flixton, weaving together nature writing with an exploration of grief, belonging, and the lives of rural working-class people. "The Bookseller" "There are some autobiographical writers who speak of utilizing nature's healing properties to overcome life challenges without fully acknowledging the role of luck in their trajectories. Not infrequently, these writers become cultural spokespeople for or representatives of a demographic that they do not fully understand. "

Weight: 384g
Dimension: 223 x 143 x 23 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008637378