A memoir about belonging and motherhood, told through the author’s lifelong passion for wild food

When Helen Lehndorf moves to the city after a childhood living off the land in rural Taranaki, she can’t help but feel different from her peers and professors. She finds solace in long walks foraging weeds and plants along the river, but something inside her still longs for home.

Chasing a feeling of ancestral belonging, she travels to England with her new husband. There they learn about nature as the commons, shared between all who encounter it – a source of delight, food, medicine.

An unexpected pregnancy in Aotearoa changes everything, and motherhood takes over Helen’s identity. When her son is diagnosed with autism, foraging becomes a space for selfhood in a chaotic world.

Weaving memoir with foraging recipes, principles and practices, A Forager’s Life is an intimate story and a promise that, with the right frame of mind, much can be made of the world around us.

‘Wonderful. A story that will have you looking at your neighbourhood with new intent.’ Wendyl Nissen

‘Fascinating and really beautiful … I loved this book.’ Claire Mabey, ‘Book Critic’, RNZ Afternoons

‘A gorgeous book. Thoughtful, funny and inspiring.’ Catherine Robertson, ‘Book Critic’, RNZ Afternoons

‘I devoured the pages … and found myself wanting more.’ Kete Books

‘… her accounts of these struggles, and how she and her family worked through them, provide the books with much of its – considerably large – heart.’ North & South

‘This heartfelt, dreamy memoir … revels in the simple things [and] encourages you to slow down.’ Shepherdess

Author Biography

Helen Lehndorf is a life-long forager and Taranaki writer who lives in the Manawatu. She co-founded the Manawatau Urban Foraging group. Her first book, The Comforter, was published by Seraph Press in 2012, and her second book, Write to the Centre, a nonfiction book about the process of keeping a journal, was published by Haunui Press in 2016. Her work has also appeared in anthologies and journals such as Sport, Landfall and JAAM.

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