Parnassus Books is thrilled to offer our customers the opportunity to pre-order signed/personalized copies of The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl. This book will be published on October 24th, 2023. Read on for important ordering information, as well as more details about the book!
All pre-orders can be signed by Margaret at no additional cost. The deadline for pre-orders is October 20th, 2023 at 5PM Central. Make sure to include the name you would like the book personalized to in the checkout notes.
From New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Margaret Renkl comes a “howling love letter to the world” (Ann Patchett): a luminous book tracing the passing of seasons, personal and natural.
In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of the natural world: “Until the very last cricket falls silent, the beauty-besotted will always find a reason to love the world.” And grief at a shifting climate, at winters that end too soon, at songbirds growing fewer and fewer.
Along the way, we also glimpse the changing rhythms of a human life. Grown children, unexpectedly home during the pandemic, prepare to depart once more. Birdsong and night-blooming flowers evoke generations past. The city and the country where Renkl raised her family transform a little more with every passing day. How can one person make a difference amid such destabilizing changes?
With fifty-two original color artworks by Billy Renkl, the author’s brother, The Comfort of Crows is a lovely and deeply moving book from a beloved writer.
More about Margaret Renkl
Margaret Renkl is the author of Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. The founding editor of Chapter 16, a daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.
