Join us at Bards Alley Bookshop in Vienna, VA as we welcome author Erika Howsare to discuss her recent release, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors. The event will take place on Thursday, May 30th at 6:30pm where Erika will give a brief talk and take any audience questions you may have before signing copies of her book. Books will be available for purchase during the event, or you may reserve your copy with us at bardsalley.square.site.
This book is perfect for residents of Northern Virginia, as we cross paths with our deer neighbors almost daily - The Age of Deer investigates our connection with the creatures and includes information on their mythology, folklore, biology, etc. and our interconnectedness with them.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. In the 21st century, our relationship is full of contradictions: We hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests. But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests.
Delving into the historical roots of these tangled attitudes and how they play out in the present, Erika Howsare observes scientists capture and collar fawns, hunters show off their trophies, a museum interpreter teaching American history while tanning a deer hide, an animal-control officer collecting the carcasses of deer killed by sharpshooters, and a woman bottle-raising orphaned fawns in her backyard. As she reports these stories, Howsare’s eye is always on the bigger picture: Why do we look at deer in the ways we do, and what do these animals reveal about human involvement in the natural world? For readers of H is for Hawk and Fox & I, The Age of Deer offers a unique and intimate perspective on a very human relationship.
