The Green Hill: Letters to a son

The Green Hill is a book by Sophie Pierce that explores how she navigated her grief after the sudden death of her son Felix. Through letters she wrote to him, composed during walks and swims near his burial place, Sophie learned to live in the landscape of sudden loss. The book combines Sophie's account of the years following Felix's death with poignant memories of his life, and weaves a celebration of the natural world and its role in our lives and relationships. It is a deeply moving and beautifully captured record of Sophie's journey through trauma and loss towards a fragile, complicated kind of joy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 02 March 2023
Publisher: Unbound

In 2017, Sophie Pierces life was irrevocably altered when her twenty-year-old son Felix passed away unexpectedly. Thrown into an unfathomable new reality, she had to find a way to survive. Through the process of writing letters to Felix, composed during walks and swims taken near his burial place by the River Dart, Sophie gradually learned to navigate the landscape of sudden loss, navigating the ebb and flow of grief.

The Green Hill collects these letters alongside Sophie's account of the years following Felix's death, interweaving poignant memories of his life. What emerges is a deeply moving, beautifully captured record of how Sophie was able to hold on to and nurture her bond with Felix, both in her mind and through a physical engagement with the landscape: actively mourning, rather than grieving.

This book is a celebration of the natural world and its role in our lives and relationships, as well as an examination of how beauty, a sense of place, and the passing seasons can help us contend with our own mortality. Above all, The Green Hill is one woman's story of navigating through trauma and loss, and towards a fragile, complicated kind of joy.

In The Green Hill, Sophie Pierce writes about the sudden death of her son Felix with an aching and gentle honesty. Struggling to come to terms with the loss not only of the young man he was, but everything that he would eventually become, she finds herself overwhelmed not only by grief, but also by love. Her writing is illuminated by a remarkable attention to the beauty and consolation of the natural world, and by the wisdom and tenderness that has been so painfully acquired. This is a book that will be a great comfort to those who have experienced similar loss, offering solace and wisdom in the face of unspeakable tragedy.

Weight: 458g
Dimension: 143 x 224 x 33 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781800181809