Thunderstone: A True Story of Losing One Home and Finding Another

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It was believed lightning would not strike a house that held a thunderstone. And so these fossils were placed on top of clocks, under floorboards, over stable doors But there are some storms that thunderstones cannot prevent.

In the wake of a traumatic lockdown, Nancy Campbell buys an old caravan and drives it into a strip of neglected woodland between a canal and railway. It is the first home she has ever owned. It will not move again.

As summer begins, Nancy embraces the challenge of how to live well in a space in which possessions and emotions often threaten to tumble. She masters the vans mysterious mechanics, but as empty passenger trains rumble past inches from the windows, rain and grief threaten to flood in.

Yet soon, Nancys encounters with the community of boaters moored nearby, and their lessons in survival off-grid, prove fundamental. The wasteland burgeons into a place of wild beauty, as Nancy works to clear industrial junk and create a forest garden. And as illness and uncertainty loom once more, it is these unconventional relationships, this anchored van, that will bring her solace and hope.

An intimate journal across the span of a defining summer, Thunderstone is a celebration of transformation; an invitation to approach life with imagination and to embrace change bravely.

Reviews

A memoir of great honesty and clarity, intimacy and subtlety . . . It asks profound questions about how to live through the storms of life with authenticity.Gavin Francis, author ofAdventures in Human Being

A courageous, compassionate, uncanny chronicle of life and loss on the fringes. Striking in its candour, brilliant in its breadth, often very funny.Dan Richards, author ofOutpost

Author Bio

Nancy Campbell is a poet and non-fiction writer whose books include Fifty Words for Snow, a Waterstones Book of the Month; The Library of Ice: Readings in a Cold Climate; Disko Bay and How to Say I Love You in Greenlandic. Her work has engaged with the environment since a winter spent as Artist in Residence at the most northern museum in the world on Upernavik in Greenland in 2010. She was appointed Canal Laureate by The Poetry Society in 2018 and received the Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society in 2020. She lives in a van outside Oxford.