An instant New York Times Bestseller, Fox and I—a remarkable true story about the four-year friendship between a solitary woman and a wild fox—is a rare and surprising book that feels even more relevant today than it did when I first met its author at a writer’s conference in New Orleans in the fall of 2019.
For years Catherine Raven worked as a Ranger at the National Parks, eventually earning both a college degree and a Ph.D. in biology. She built herself a house off the grid in Montana and supported herself by teaching remotely and leading field classes in Yellowstone National Park. Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. Since leaving home, Cathy had always been on her own; books and the natural world kept her company, and she had never felt lonely. But what was she to make of this fox, who each day would situate himself close to a lone forget-me-not and watch her come and go? How do you even talk to a fox? One day Cathy brought her camping chair outside and sat just feet away from him. And then she began to read to him from The Little Prince.
Back in New York after the conference, I couldn’t stop thinking about the pages I’d read. The book reminded me why we publishers do what we do: the story resonated with me so strongly that I believed other people had to read it too. I called Cathy and told her that Julie and I were working on starting a new company. “I don’t know if it’ll happen, and if it does happen, I don’t know when—but I can’t help asking you to wait for us,” I told her. She surprised me by saying yes.
Fox and I is about so many things that feel important at this difficult time. When Covid-19 hit, and I isolated myself in the woods on Long Island, I thought of Cathy and her relationship to nature. When a fox crossed my path as I drove to a meeting with a potential investor, I viewed it as a sign of good luck. (He invested!) When the fires raged on the West Coast, the book resonated powerfully for another tragic reason. In my own solitude, the book opened me up to the different forms friendship can take, and the ways in which we are intrinsically connected to the world we live in. Fox is now a friend of mine too—and I hope he will become your friend as well. In fact, Fox—curious, unique, determined to matter—inspired our new logo!
— Cindy Spiegel
Photo by Henry Randel Chinn
𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗘 𝗥𝗔𝗩𝗘𝗡 received her Ph.D. in biology from Montana State University and is a former National Park Ranger at Glacier, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Voyageurs, and Yellowstone National Parks. Her natural history essays have appeared in American Scientist, Journal of American Mensa, and Montana Magazine. She is currently an Assistant Program Director and Professor at South University in Savannah, Georgia.
Winner of The PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
Finalist for the Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize
Nautilus Book Award, Gold Medal Winner
July 2022 Indie Next Pick
Reading the West Book Award finalist
Good Morning America Buzz Pick
Shortlisted for the John Burroughs Medal
“Mysterious and magical.”
—Wall Street Journal
“In this quiet, charming memoir, Raven recounts her journey to accepting this unusual companion.... Throughout, Raven writes about her environment with wonder and reverence but never formality—it’s the easy affection of someone who’s long made family of the natural world.”
—BuzzFeed News
“It’s a familiar story arc: human becomes best friends with a wild animal and life lessons are learned. Yet in biologist and former Glacier National Park ranger Catherine Raven’s hands, the story—of isolation and tender friendship with a wild fox—feels new. …Her memoir reminds us that connection to the natural world comes in many forms.”
—Time Magazine
“A soulful and indelible exploration of an interspecies friendship.”
—Booklist
“Intimate and poetic …. By paying ecstatic attention to grasses, insects, birds, and animals, Catherine Raven allows us to hear what nature is saying to us. Fox and I is essential reading for anyone concerned about the catastrophe human beings are inflicting on the environment from which they and all other creatures sprang.”
—Stephen Batchelor, author of The Art of Solitude
“Fox and I is a mesmerizing, beautifully written, and entirely unsentimental book about the connection among all things: the author and her fox friend, but also magpies, brown dogs, fawns, voles, and junipers. I learned as much about the meaning of friendship from this book as I have from any work of nonfiction that I’ve ever read.”
—Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club
“The book everyone will be talking about… [A] real-life friendship that mirrors the one between Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince and his fox, full of tenderness and understanding.”
—The New York Times
“[Raven’s] reflections shine a spotlight on the path out of loneliness, reminding us all that nature itself will ensure none of us are ever truly alone.”
—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
“Raven’s extraordinary memoir is a love song to the animal who miraculously arrives in the front yard of her remote cabin every afternoon to be read passages from The Little Prince. A poetic, revelatory portrait of a biologist’s solitary sojourn.”
—Oprah Daily
“A heartfelt meditation on the power of nature and a touching homage to a beloved wild friend.”
—Kirkus
“The observations of high-desert nature—of wildlife, plants, landscapes, weather—in this book are some of the best you will ever read. The story of Catherine Raven and the fox's friendship charmed me and drew me in completely.”
—Ian Frazier, author of Great Plains
“Both beautiful and moving, as well as philosophically stimulating regarding the approach to anthropomorphism. I have never read this discourse so well explored before. Normally anthropomorphism is used as a criticism and here it is also played as a defense against reductionist science seeking to `other’ creatures from the fellowship of feelings for emotional intelligence. A Thoreau for the new Green Enlightenment.”
—Sir Tim Smit, co-founder of The Eden Project
“Utterly Captivating... Beautiful and wise without ever being sappy or manipulative.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Entrancing…. Raven’s gorgeous account of her bond with a fox while living in a remote cabin will open readers’ eyes to the ways humans connect to the natural world and vice versa. … If there’s one book you pick up this summer, make it this one.”
—Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
“Spellbinding … [an] exhilarating, often tense and difficult ride…. Raven has written a book about reading to a fox that I want to read to anyone or anything that cares to listen.”
—Alta
“[An] offbeat and charming memoir. .... Along with reverently describing her furry friend—who had a ‘face so innocent that you would have concluded that he never stalked a bluebird, let alone dismembered one’—Raven writes poetically about the flora (“my sun-worshipping tenants”) and fauna around her. Rich and meditative, Raven’s musings on nature and solitude are delightful company.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This tale of wilderness, in the tradition of Thoreau and Steinbeck, is distinguished by a narrator who sees herself as one of the many creatures she lives among …. Catherine Raven has achieved something unique in the literature of nature-writing: genuine love for the wild within the rigor of scientific observation. The voice of this story-teller is startlingly original. I read it breathlessly.”
—Andrei Codrescu
“Fox and I will make you feel deeply about our relationship with animals and nature. After you read this book, you will experience animals in a new and marvelous way.”
—Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation
“If Thoreau had read The Little Prince, he would have written Fox and I.”
—Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi
“What emotional vocabulary can express both the joy and the doubts [Raven] experienced devoting copious time and love to a wild creature? This fanciful, literate, unsentimental and yet deeply felt memoir is her answer. … [Raven is] a superb nature writer. … [T]he experience of journeying alongside her as she lives with Fox and meditates about him is extremely rewarding…Fox and I will appeal to those who despair about human depredation of the natural world and sense climate change as the looming, existential threat to life. But Raven’s book isn’t a treatise, it isn’t a call to arms, it isn’t political. Perhaps it is best understood as a plea for understanding. Raven needed Fox: He changed her, made her more comfortable in the world. He showed her that even when padding along under the glorious full moon’s light, it’s better to have someone at your side.”
—Clare McHugh, Washington Post