KERRI NI DOCHARTAIGH’S Thin Places comes in on a tidal wave of nature books. Alarm at the speed of destruction of the natural world has set many writers to work and many publishers to spot a market.

Described as “a mixture of memoir, history and nature writing,” Ni Dochartaigh in this, her first book, turns to wild places and animals as a form of psychic escape.

It is the traumatic legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles that creates the constantly unsettled fugitive, finding balm in the wild swimming she loves, in rivers, lakes and seas flowing through what she calls “thin places.”