Raising Hare: A Memoir

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A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one womans unlikely friendship with a wild hare.

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 harea leveretthat 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 Daltons 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.

Reviews

Longlisted for the 2025 Womens Prize for Nonfiction

One of Kirkuss Most Anticipated Nonfiction of Spring 2025

One of Paste Magazines Most Anticipated Nonfiction of 2025

Daltons clear, measured prose and Denise Nestors delicate drawings provide . . . a bit of solace in a world that has now returned to an even more frenetic state. In Raising Hare, nature, indeed, takes its course.The New York Times

Here Dalton finds and forges another kind of literary world: one in which the writer observes an animal, and herself, and the quiet yet profound love that grows between them.Boston Globe

Ms. Dalton has given us a portrait, both ephemeral and real, of a creature of habit, set hours and favorite places, that walks so lightly on this earth, and that can be trusting on its own terms. She seems to share Hares traits of serenity, stillness and alertness to danger. Its a testament to her skills of observation that the two reflect and enhance each other in unexpected, often remarkable ways.Wall Street Journal

Author Bio

Chloe Dalton is a writer, political adviser and foreign policy specialist. She spent over a decade working in the UK Parliament and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and has advised, and written for and with, numerous prominent figures. She divides her time between London and her home in the English countryside. Raising Hare is her first book.