High praise from High Country News

Rob Rich knows beavers well — he’s been observing and writing about them for several years in Whatcom County, Washington — so his enthusiastic response to Once They Were Hats is all the more welcome. In a recent review, published in the High Country News, Rich writes: “Backhouse is a perceptive observer and listener, ever alert to the subtle ways the beaver’s story entwines with individual people. She has the knack of a documentary filmmaker.” He also notes that the book offers “a wide assortment of reasons to value the beaver’s utterly unique lifestyle, while helping us understand how it has shaped — and still shapes — our own.”

You can read Rob Rich’s own writings about beavers in his blog, the Whatcom Field Journal.