The Mourner's Bestiary

In this stunning and original debut, writer and musician Caffall draws links between hereditary illness and the fates of marine life in collapsing ecosystems. Caffall brilliantly parallels her family’s suffering with large-scale ecological upheaval, maintaining a flicker of hope for the future in both cases. This deserves a wide readership. – Starred Review * Publisher’s Weekly *
A penetrating work that brims with tension. – Kristen Rabe * Foreword Reviews *
Insightful and deeply researched […] Caffall looks into the nuances of individual human survival and the survival of our planet as a whole. * Booktrib. *
Eiren Caffall’s impassioned debut memoir blends memory and research to pay tribute to family members lost to a genetic kidney disease–and to marine creatures threatened by ecological collapse. – Rebecca Foster * Shelf Awareness *
Beguiling, idiosyncratic: Eiren Caffall contributes to a growing memoir genre that explores illness and healing. The Mourner’s Bestiary draws a poetic parallel between the body’s experience of chronic disease and the marine ecosystems Caffall knows well—an unexpected juxtaposition that gives new dimension to the climate hazards we face and opportunities to address them. Caffall writes with plangent intensity about our responsibility toward the planet, and her eye for the wonder and beauty of ocean life pierces the illusion of disconnected existence. Water becomes an element that draws us together. – Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant judge’s citation
Eiren Caffall has produced some of the most powerful writing on the ecological crisis I have read anywhere. By looking at climate change through the lens of her illness and through the eyes of her unique son, problems that we so often push away because of the enormity of their size and their apparent distance from daily life suddenly become intimate and human-scale. We can suddenly allow repressed and suppressed truths to enter us and are forever changed. Caffall is a gifted writer, and this book is strong medicine. – Naomi Klein * author, social activist, and filmmaker *

EIREN CAFFALL is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV Fire, forthcoming in 2024.

She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, Hedgebrook, and Ragdale.

Row House Publishing will release her first book and memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary, in 2024, and her novel, All the Water in the World, is slated for release by St. Martin’s Press in early 2025.

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