In James Rebanks’ latest book, The Place of Tides, what begins as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change. Reviewed by Tracey Edstein.

When I was a child, if the night was particularly cold, my mother would place over my blankets a pale grey eiderdown which had come to us after my grandfather’s death. It was deliciously light but warm. Now that I have read James Rebanks’ The Place of Tides, I know that eider down comes from eider ducks!

Rebanks’ is a tale of land and sea, of women no longer young, who work hard to preserve an age-old tradition, and of contemplation and enlightenment.

When the time is right, Rebanks, a sheep farmer from England’s Lake District, reprises an earlier visit to Anna, a ‘duck woman’ living on an isolated Norwegian island. Anna’s vocation, which is integral to her family’s story, is to protect and encourage the little eider ducks to return to an island they have abandoned.

Anna builds nests and places them where the ducks and their eggs will be safe from predators. This will allow Anna and fellow ‘duck woman’ Ingrid to harvest the eider down, but this is secondary to the calling to continue the traditions of island life.

Initially, despite his longing to return to the island of Fjaeroy, Rebanks is unsure about the commitment he’s made. He’s left his wife and four children to care for the farm, and he senses that while Anna’s welcomed him – although she’s a woman of very few words – Ingrid is not convinced he will be an asset.

He has to step back from a life where he knows what to expect and simply ‘do as he’s told’. “For the first time in my life, I was in a place entirely run by women.” Eventually he writes, “I was delighted that Anna and Ingrid were now treating me as part of their sisterhood …”  

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks.

The work of preparing for the ducks’ arrival and (hopefully) nesting is labour intensive, meticulous, unpredictable and offers no guarantees. Rebanks gradually sees the similarities between being a ‘duck woman’ and being a farmer, as he recognises that Anna’s commitment to, and knowledge of, this island environment matches his own deep attachment to his family farm.

When the rains come and no nests can be built – always to Anna’s exacting specifications – the little household of three is confined to a small cottage, the women knitting, Rebanks reading and everyone drinking coffee.

This is also an opportunity for storytelling, and as he learns more about the trials of Anna’s life – she is now 70 – he recognises how important this last season on the island is to her. “… for Anna it was simple: without our help these ducks would be in big trouble.”

While the eider down the women obtain as the reward for their labours is not enough for many quilts, it’s more about the ducks than the down. “(Anna) and the ducks were absolutely and mesmerisingly one thing, bound together.”

As Rebanks learns more of the story of Anna and her islands, he reflects on his own story. Distance allows him to see more clearly that the vehemence of his determination to maintain his farm has hardened him, and not in a good way: “… a certain version of me died on that island – a person who had been quite effective and ruthless, a machine-like me that got things done. … Now, I just wanted to get to work with my family; to make our farm the most beautiful and abundant place it could be.”

Rebanks’ loyalty to Anna leads him to convict, in his own mind, anyone who has hurt her. He recognises too his own anger: (I was) bitter that no one seemed to recognise the trouble I was in”.

However, this is not Anna’s approach at all. “I had been drawn to Anna because she seemed heroically tough – and she was tough, but her real superpower was forgiveness. She knew that a life full of other people meant accepting their weaknesses and still being there for them.”   

One anecdote that struck a chord with me concerns whales, and it deserves citing in full:

Anna … told me she had watched a TV program about orcas once. The females stopped having children in their forties and had a menopause. But after that they often led their pods for decades, sometimes until they were ninety or a hundred years old. With a grandmother watching over them, the pod was safer and lived longer. Someone had to remember where you might get beached or stranded. When a matriarch died, the pods often struggled  ̶  the group broke apart or got into trouble, and mortality rates rose. Even the strong, older males saw their life expectancy shortened when their mother and grandmother weren’t there.     

I cannot help but see a valuable analogy with the contemporary Church. The opportunities for women of faith continue to be limited, and in some ways the Church could be said to be “beached or stranded”, at least in the context in which I live.   

Rebanks tells a simple story that is elevated by language as luminous as his Arctic surroundings. As he becomes absorbed into island life, “My world was now dictated by the coming and going of the tides.” Winter is long and dark, and so the coming of summer is a real cause for celebration, when darkness is succeeded by light. “Each of those Arctic summer days felt like a lifetime of light.”

Rebanks’ time on Fjaeroy is a retreat from the demands of his (admittedly much loved) ordinary life in England, and a time for living moment to moment. He says, “The island was my medicine” and later, “I was beginning to journey back to the person I had once been – and needed to be again.”

At the end of his tale, Rebanks shares his wisdom:

Anna’s example was simple: if we are to save the world, we have to start somewhere. We just have to do one damn thing after another. Hers was a small kind of heroism, but it was the most powerful kind. The kind that saves us. We all have to go to work in our own communities, in our own landscapes. We have to show up day in, day out, for years and years, doing the work. There will be no brass band, no parade. And we have to accept and keep the faith in each other, and somehow work together. It is the only way we can make our own tiny deeds add up to become the change we all need.  

Hear, hear!

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks (Allen Lane 2024).