Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder's luminous debut, Mother, Creature, Kin, explores what it means to mother--to protect and nurture the world--in a time of increasing uncertainty. Delving into the lives of owls, whales, rivers, and other natural phenomena, she considers numerous threats to belonging and flourishing, and urges humans to care for plants, creatures, and one another. With scientific precision and a poet's loving eye, Steinauer-Scudder asks how all humans can "work toward mutual thriving," whether or not they are mothers in the traditional sense.
Mother, Creature, Kin is rooted in multiple landscapes: the midwestern plains and New England forests where the author has made her home; the Atlantic waters inhabited by a declining population of right whales; and the environmentalist Rachel Carson's Maine cottage, Silverledges, as well as a wildlife refuge that bears her name and is surrounded by salt marshes. Steinauer-Scudder describes each setting with precise, evocative detail, and speaks with scientists, researchers, and residents who help her understand these layered ecosystems. While acknowledging the complex problems of climate change and extreme weather, she argues that good mothers--human or otherwise--must live in relationship with the land and multiple species. As she navigates her own daughter's birth and infancy, Steinauer-Scudder puts her ideas into practice, striving to teach her daughter about belonging, adaptiveness, resilience, and deep love.
Digging into such concepts as entanglement, edges, beauty, survival, and imagination, Mother, Creature, Kin is a meditation on the interconnectedness of all beings and a clarion call to cherish and protect this beautiful, embattled planet and its more-than-human inhabitants. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams