Read this when
H Is for Hawk
When my dad died I didn't cry. I got a goshawk. 🦅 Grief will find a weird way out, and then it'll walk you back to people.
Who it's for
After her father, the photojournalist Alisdair Macdonald, dies suddenly of a heart attack, Macdonald pours herself into training a goshawk, Mabel, and gradually cuts herself off from human life.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Helen Macdonald's 2014 memoir, published by Jonathan Cape, follows the year she spent training a goshawk after the sudden death of her father, the photojournalist Alisdair Macdonald. It combines her experience of grief and the practice of falconry with reflections on T. H. White's book The Goshawk and White's own struggles to train a hawk.
Where to find it
In print; widely available from libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an audiobook. Not public domain. A film adaptation starring Claire Foy premiered in 2025.
Before you start
Heads up: A parent's sudden death; depression.
Age: Ages 16+
Sorrow is hushed into peace in my heart like the evening among the silent trees.Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, no. 10
