New York Times Bestseller: This account of adopting and raising a vicious bird of prey while grieving a father’s death is “a soaring wonder of a book” (The Boston Globe).
One of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year

One of Slate’s 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years

Time’s #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year
An instant classic and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald’s story of adopting and raising one of nature’s most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel’s temperament mirrors Helen’s own state of grief after her father’s death, and together raptor and human “discover the pain and beauty of being alive” (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from a unique and transcendent voice.
“Her prose glows and burns.” —The Wall Street Journal
“An elegantly written amalgam of nature writing, personal memoir, literary portrait, and an examination of bereavement.” —The Washington Post
“Breathtaking . . . Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence—and her own—with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.” —The New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot