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Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.
Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.
“A beautiful book that makes you think profoundly about how we so often tune out the natural world around us. Chloe Dalton is a tender, curious, wise, mind-expanding guide, connecting readers with the wild we humans once knew so well. I will be recommending this to everyone.”
—Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 4, 2025 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593701850
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593701850
- File size: 9652 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from January 15, 2025
Made more humane by a hare. A political adviser whose demanding work often had her leaving England, Dalton spent much of the Covid-19 pandemic at her converted barn in the countryside. Out for a walk one February day, she spotted a creature in the middle of an unpaved path. "Leveret," she writes. "The word surfaced in my mind, even though I had never seen a young hare before." Hours later, she returned to the spot and found that the russet-colored animal hadn't moved, defenseless against predators and cars. Unsure of what to do, Dalton carefully picked up the animal and brought it home. Thus begins an astounding debut memoir in which Dalton shows how a serene and long-misunderstood creature opened her eyes in many ways. It just might do the same for readers. The leveret--a diminutive of the French word for hare, li�vre--is a fluff ball that fits in her palm, lighter than an apple. When Dalton feeds it, "its tiny ivory-coloured paws would...knead the air in a trembling, milky ecstasy." Not knowing how to care for the animal--unlike rabbits, a smaller species, hares haven't been domesticated--Dalton educates herself. The books she reads say much about hunting and cooking hares, but little else. To the rescue comes an 18th-century poem by William Cowper that cites the food that "little one" comes to devour: oats. Those oats (and pears) help the hare quickly grow to its full size, a lean and lively "miniature bucking bronco" that, when not "unmoving as a sphinx," loves to dance about the house. What becomes of the animal in a land where hares' numbers have drastically declined? No secrets will be spilled here. But Dalton herself is changed, calmed by an endearing creature that, as she writes, "challenged my priorities and woke up my senses." A soulful and gracefully written book about an animal's power to rekindle curiosity.COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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February 7, 2025
Dalton, who has worked as a speechwriter for Prince William and Angelina Jolie, debuts with an account of the hare who forged a friendship with her deep in the English countryside during the pandemic lockdown. Prepub Alert.
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