Edge Seasons by Beth Powning
Knopf Canada 2005, available in paperback by Vintage Canada, September 2006

"There are few writers who can evoke the wild world with such intensity and originality...This memoir is a book to return to, if only to find our way." Patrick Lane, The Globe and Mail

In the middle years of her life, Beth Powning finds herself standing on a threshold, an "edge season" - those moments in the year's cycle when weather is unpredictable, caught in a hiatus between one season and the next.

For almost twenty years, Beth has lived on a farm near Sussex, New Brunswick, with her husband, Peter, and their son Jake. On a late summer walk through their north pasture, Beth and Peter come across the sauna they built at the edge of the woods when they first bought the farm. After many winters of abandonment, the sauna is now derelict. Beth recalls the energy, idealism, and faith that went into its creation, and wonders how they could have forgotten such a special place. While family and friends help rebuild the sauna, it becomes a symbol for the resurrection of vision, and a catalyst for a year of transformation.

As fall and winter gradually shut down the vibrant life of gardens, fields, and forests, and Jake prepares to leave for university, Beth and Peter consider changes of their own. After years of working in the family business, and developing a career as a photographer, Beth contemplates returning to writing, which she had set aside while raising her son. Gathering courage from the regenerative force of nature, she decides to move forward into the unknown and pursue her writing work once again.

Filled with gorgeous descriptions of the natural world, Beth masterfully weaves her acutely observed descriptions of the countryside with the story of her own intimate transformation. Together they produce an unforgettable memoir of an intense year-long journey that illuminates how change can shatter even as it strengthens.