Overview

"*Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Literary Hub!* A Finalist for the 2022 NBCC Awards in Nonfiction, the 2023 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award, and the NEIBA 2023 New England Book Award* From Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Proulx, this riveting deep dive into the history of our wetlands and what their systematic destruction means for the planet ""is both an enchanting work of nature writing and a rousing call to action"" (Esquire). ""I learned something new--and found something amazing--on every page."" --Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land A lifelong acolyte of the natural world, Annie Proulx brings her witness and research to the subject of wetlands and the vitally important role they play in preserving the environment--by storing the carbon emissions that accelerate climate change. Fens, bogs, swamps, and marine estuaries are crucial to the earth's survival, and in four illuminating parts, Proulx documents their systemic destruction in pursuit of profit. In a vivid and revelatory journey through history, Proulx describes the fens of 16th-century England, Canada's Hudson Bay lowlands, Russia's Great Vasyugan Mire, and America's Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. She introduces the early explorers who launched the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and writes of the diseases spawned in the wetlands--the Ague, malaria, Marsh Fever. A sobering look at the degradation of wetlands over centuries and the serious ecological consequences, this is ""an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important"" (Bill McKibben). ""A stark but beautifully written Silent Spring-style warning from one of our greatest novelists."" --The Christian Science Monitor"

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Reviews

Praise for Annie Proulx So often feared, dredged, and drained, swamps, bogs, and fens (it turns out) are just as vital to our species' survival on this planet as healthy forests and oceans--perhaps moreso. Proulx has written a moving elegy and cri de coeur for our world's wetlands. I learned something new--and found something amazing--on every page. --Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land Talk about seeing the whole world through a single well-chosen window! Annie Proulx is, as ever, remarkable--her mind, her heart, and her learning take us on an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important. A compact classic! --Bill McKibben, author The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back on his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened Annie Proulx has brought nature full circle in her short history, Fen, Bog, and Swamp. They all store carbon with a watertight seal of the vault. What was once literature and lighting, food and fodder, mood and medicine to the peoples of the past has nearly gone. The carbon graves will open. We must understand and restore these vital ecosystems to protect our future. --Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of To Speak for the Trees In turn exhilarating, poetic and terrifying, Fen, Bog & Swamp opened my eyes to the crucial role that watery landscapes should play in our environmental survival. Proulx juggles fascinating characters, extraordinary histories and serious science with the erudition and literary grace for which she is justifiably famous. She makes a truly elegant and compelling contribution to the debates about climate justice issues that confront us all. --Charlotte Gray, author of The Promise of Canada

Advance Praise for Fen, Bog & Swamp With this collection of short essays about peatlands, [Proulx's] eye for folly is sharply trained on the long record of ruinous drainage 'projects.' But while there are many occasions for eco-grief in the book, there are also glimmers of hope. Fans of Proulx's fiction, even those with marginal interest in peatlands, will be intrigued by the snippets of memoir and the habits of a writer's mind that this collection reveals. --Library Journal Pulitzer winner Proulx (Barkskins) sounds the alarm on the role of Earth's wetlands in the climate crisis in this stunning account. This resonant ode to a planet in peril is tough to forget. --Publishers Weekly, starred review Remaking the world inevitably impoverishes it and us, as Proulx writes in a crescendo... She provides a particularly good compact history of the draining of the fens of eastern England in an act pitting capitalists against working people... An eloquent, engaged argument for the preservation of a small and damp yet essential part of the planet. --Kirkus So often feared, dredged, and drained, swamps, bogs, and fens (it turns out) are just as vital to our species' survival on this planet as healthy forests and oceans--perhaps moreso. Proulx has written a moving elegy and cri de coeur for our world's wetlands. I learned something new--and found something amazing--on every page. --Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land Talk about seeing the whole world through a single well-chosen window! Annie Proulx is, as ever, remarkable--her mind, her heart, and her learning take us on an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important. A compact classic! --Bill McKibben, author The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back on his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened Annie Proulx has brought nature full circle in her short history, Fen, Bog, and Swamp. They all store carbon with a watertight seal of the vault. What was once literature and lighting, food and fodder, mood and medicine to the peoples of the past has nearly gone. The carbon graves will open. We must understand and restore these vital ecosystems to protect our future. --Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of To Speak for the Trees In turn exhilarating, poetic and terrifying, Fen, Bog & Swamp opened my eyes to the crucial role that watery landscapes should play in our environmental survival. Proulx juggles fascinating characters, extraordinary histories and serious science with the erudition and literary grace for which she is justifiably famous. She makes a truly elegant and compelling contribution to the debates about climate justice issues that confront us all. --Charlotte Gray, author of The Promise of Canada

Praise for Fen, Bog & Swamp A fascinating, captivating new book by Annie Proulx [that] reveals the mystery and majesty of fens, bogs, and swamps. --Garden & Gun Magazine In all the book's sections, the righteous anger of a climate watcher is blended with the beautiful prose this author has been writing for 40 years... This is a stark but beautifully written 'Silent Spring'-style warning call from one of our greatest novelists. --Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor This haunting tribute to the world's peatlands is also a deeply researched lament for the draining and destruction of critical habitats that store twice as much carbon as all the world's forests... Proulx's poetic description of these places, and peat itself, is a pleasure to read. --Financial Times The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Brokeback Mountain and The Shipping News has written a book--really a lengthy, beautifully executed essay--on climate change... In searing prose that merges history and science, Proulx wields her pen like a knife to slowly carve out what's already lost. --Bloomberg In a way, Proulx points out, the fight to preserve wetlands is a metaphor for the global task of slowing climate change--a failure to see how small acts of destruction add up to something much larger, and a scramble to save ecosystems only when the harms to ourselves become undeniable. --Wired The Pulitzer Prize-winning Proulx ( The Shipping News, Barkskins ) turns to nonfiction, writing about climate change, the history of wetlands, and what their destruction means for the planet. --Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Author Information

"Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novels The Shipping News and Barkskins, and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story ""Brokeback Mountain,"" which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. Fen, Bog, and Swamp is her second work of nonfiction. She lives in New Hampshire."

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