An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

In 2012, Leila Philip and Garth Evans set out to challenge themselves as artists. Philip, an award-winning memoirist, wrote poems. Evans, an internationally renowned sculptor, made watercolors. Water Rising tells the story of this remarkable collaboration. Philip’s realist poems—about nature, beauty, love, and loss, set amongst Evans’ abstract, deeply hued, layered watercolors, create a book which is more than just a gorgeous read and a visual feast. What emerges in this book is a stunning and original collaboration, which, as Worcester Art Museum Director, Matthias Waschek, points out in his introduction, extends how we think about the relationship between painting and poetry. The title poem, “Water Rising,” was a finalist for the 2015 Pushcart Prize in literature.

The mission of Water Rising is to generate funds to support environmental stewardship. At its core, Water Rising celebrates our human need to connect to place.

After her father’s death in 1992, Leila Philip and her family faced the imminent loss of the Hudson River Valley Farm that had been home to the Philip and Van Ness families since 1732. Taking an unpaid leave from her job, Leila set out with her mother to save their farm and the family home, a sprawling Federal period mansion called Talavera. After fifteen generations of Philip and Van Ness men, it would be up to these two determined women to hold off the twin threats of bankruptcy and urban sprawl.

Returning to Talavera led Leila on an unexpected journey into the past even as she and her mother sought to chart a future for their commercial fruit orchard. Stumbling upon family letters, belongings, and secrets, Leila discovered a past that was inextricably woven into three centuries of U.S. history. In A Family Place, Leila Philip brings to life the people and events that shaped her family and Talavera. Across the generations we meet colonial Dutch farmers, Revolutionary Generals, Civil War heroes, freed slaves, ambassadors, and a cast of wonderfully renegade aunts who fled Talavera in search of adventure around the world. Set against this background of land and people are the day-to-day elements of farm life at Talevera, from horticulture and beekeeping to art history and Romantic-era landscape gardening. It is in this quest to uncover and understand life at Talavera that Leila inevitably finds a place for herself, as she and her family and their farm embark on a new century in the Hudson Valley.

Women in Japan and the United States have always been in a dialogue, albeit silent one. Here in the United States, cultural stereotypes of Japanese women- Madame Butterfly or the alluring geisha- have been held up as models of female submissiveness. As Japan’s role as economic competitor has grown, this stereotype has transformed into that of the household drudge, a reminder and warning to American women that they should stop complaining and appreciate how much beter off they are. In Japan, the stereotype of the American woman has served and equally ambivalent role. In the late ’60s and ’70s, Japanese mass media quickly caricatured the Wester feminist as a sex-deprived siren. And the contemporary American career woman, while attractive and bold, is routinely depicted as lonely and miserable, a ruthless competitor of men and destroyer of the family.

Recently, this dialogue of stereotypes became a dialogue of voices. At the Japan Society’s “Women’s Agenda for the ’90s” conference held in Tarrytown, New York in June 1992, professional women from Japan and the United States had an opportunity to discuss what was on their minds. For almost two days, businesswomen and lawyers, policymakers and politicians, journalists and research analysts discussed their concerns as women leaders. They exchanged information on the current situation for women in both countries and compared strategies for change. Most important, they began to talk, to exchange stories and anecdotes and, through this process, to discover how fragile the differences between them really are.

In 1983 Leila Philip made her way to southernmost Japan in search of a potter who would take on a foreign apprentice. In Miyama–a village settled almost four centuries ago by seventy Korean potters–she was accepted as an apprentice into the workshop and home of master potter Kazy Nagayoshi and his wife, Reiko.

As she tells us of her progress in the poetry workshop, Philip gives us an insightful guide to an exacting craft, a deeply personal portrait of the village, and a beautifully perceptive look at the cultural roots of modern Japan. With good humor and vivid detail, she tells of days spent planting and harvesting rice in the paddies. And with grace and respect, she introduces us to the people of Miyama–to the feisty old farming woman, to the artisans from neighboring studios, and, most especially, to Nagayoshi and Reiko.