Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay

by Merilyn Simonds Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley

Overview

From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman-a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.



Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five babies, Louise became nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets. Repulsed by the media circus, she retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her "loghouse nest" became a Mecca for international ornithologists.



Lawrence was an old woman when Merilyn Simonds moved into the woods not far away. Their paths crossed, sparking Simonds's lifelong interest. A dedicated birder, Simonds brings her own songbird experiences from Canadian nesting grounds and Mexican wintering grounds to this deeply researched, engaging portrait of a uniquely fascinating woman.

Editorial Reviews

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

Elizabeth Wiley’s warm voice and audible enthusiasm welcome listeners to the remarkable story of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Swedish aristocrat who became a WWI front-line nurse, then a Canadian wilderness nurse, and finally a pioneering bird-watcher known as Canada’s Rachel Carson. Captivating even for those with only a passing interest in birds, Simonds’s book is an artful mix that blends her own first-person remembrances with crisp, engaging biography and extensive quotations from de Kiriline Lawrence’s delightful letters. The result gives Wiley an opportunity to shine as she switches seamlessly among lively readings of the letters with a hint of de Kiriline Lawrence’s Swedish accent; well-paced and lilting narration of the biographical sections; and cheerful performances of Simonds's personable memories. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

★ 02/28/2022

Simonds (The Convict Lover) excels in this beautifully written and moving biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence (1894–1992), a nature writer and distinguished Canadian ornithologist. Through a diligent analysis of Lawrence’s correspondence, scrapbooks, research notes, and book drafts, Simonds recreates both her subject’s inner life and considerable achievements. Lawrence was born in Sweden and served as a nurse for the Red Cross during WWI. She and her first husband, Gleb Kirilin, were imprisoned by the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war—Kirilin, a Russian military officer, didn’t survive, and when Lawrence was released, she immigrated to Canada, where she remarried and began keeping “meticulous records” of the birds she saw at her Ontario cabin. By the end of her first year she’d identified 73 species and had begun to write prolifically; she was eventually invited to join the prestigious (and male-dominated) American Ornithologists Union. Her nature writing received multiple awards, and she made crucial discoveries in the field of ornithology, setting a still-standing record for counting bird song and “pars the meaning of bird behaviour that scientists are only now proving to be true.” Simonds’s prose shines and brings the reader into the remarkable moments bird-watchers live for. This brilliant account does justice to a pioneering figure who merits wider recognition. (May)

From the Publisher

Simonds’s prose shines and brings the reader into the remarkable moments bird-watchers live for. This brilliant account does justice to a pioneering figure who merits wider recognition.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Simonds’ own birding and life story are woven into the narrative, adding to the addictive quality of this marvelous biography of a true pioneer of ornithology.” — Booklist starred review

“A stellar, adventure-filled biography.” — Foreword Reviews, starred review

“What a life! Louise de Kiriline Lawrence escaped the Russian Revolution, was nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets, then moved to a log cabin and became an iconic birder and friend of Simonds, who has written this lyrical, passionate, and deeply researched portrait.” — Margaret Atwood

“Simonds — an author of both fiction and nonfiction, including The Convict Lover — is a master of her craft, and that’s clearly reflected in Woman, Watching. Her prose is rich and sprawling, spinning an in-depth narrative out of de Kiriline Lawrence’s life. Stepping into this story is like entering its subject’s beloved forest: there is always another layer, another secret path, another living, breathing thing left to discover. Woman, Watching is a book for long summer twilights or cold winter nights — preferably spent at a cottage or by an old stone fireplace. It’s the kind of book you’ll dive into only to shake your head a few chapters later and wonder where the day has gone. As with the woods, a reader can get lost in there if they’re not careful.” — Quill & Quire

“Woman, Watching is an entrancing blend of biography, memoir, history, research, and homage that is unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s radical, it’s ravishing. This portrait of a world rich with diversity, and the subsequent thinning of that fullness, moved me deeply.” — Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life

“Exhilarating. Louise de Kiriline Lawrence has found her ideal biographer in Merilyn Simonds. Woman, Watching is an inspiration and a joy.” — Candace Savage, author of The Wonder of Canadian Birds

AudioFile

Elizabeth Wiley’s warm voice and audible enthusiasm welcome listeners to the remarkable story of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence…She switches seamlessly among lively readings of the letters with a hint of de Kiriline Lawrence’s Swedish accent; well-paced and lilting narration of the biographical sections; and cheerful performances of Wiley’s personable memories. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

Booklist (starred review)

A marvelous biography of a true pioneer of ornithology.”

Foreword Reviews

A stellar, adventure-filled biography.”

AUGUST 2022 - AudioFile

Elizabeth Wiley’s warm voice and audible enthusiasm welcome listeners to the remarkable story of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Swedish aristocrat who became a WWI front-line nurse, then a Canadian wilderness nurse, and finally a pioneering bird-watcher known as Canada’s Rachel Carson. Captivating even for those with only a passing interest in birds, Simonds’s book is an artful mix that blends her own first-person remembrances with crisp, engaging biography and extensive quotations from de Kiriline Lawrence’s delightful letters. The result gives Wiley an opportunity to shine as she switches seamlessly among lively readings of the letters with a hint of de Kiriline Lawrence’s Swedish accent; well-paced and lilting narration of the biographical sections; and cheerful performances of Simonds's personable memories. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175632461
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	05/24/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

The March sun wasn’t yet warm enough to slump the snow when the evening grosbeaks descended on Louise’s feeding station. She was watching out her kitchen window, as she always did, a cup of strong coffee in hand, her reward after a vigorous bird walk at dawn, a habit of forty years that she had not yet given up, even on the cusp of ninety.

The flock of black and yellow birds mobbing her tray of sunflower seeds was the largest she’d seen in years. For decades, she’d been collecting data on evening grosbeaks for her ornithologist friend Doris—how many came to her feeder, male or female, when and where they nested, how long it took the eggs took to hatch and the young to fledge. She made a mental note to check her records to see if the numbers this spring were truly record-breaking.

Suddenly, amidst the black and yellow throng, a flash of pure gold. Louise lifted her binoculars. Obviously a grosbeak—those thick seed-cracking bills—but solidly yellow, like an oversize canary.

The other birds settled back to their feeding, edging the uncanny bird off the tray whenever it tried to snatch a seed, until finally, the gilded bird rose like wisp of pure sunshine and disappeared among the trees.

***

My feeder was half an hour southwest of Louise’s, flying as a hungry bird might along the canopy-highway of boreal forest between her log house nestled in the pines on the edge of Pimisi Bay and my R2000 prefab, tucked into hundreds of acres of forest just south of Callander in Ontario’s Near North.

Evening grosbeaks shifted across my wooden feeding tray as if by some prearranged schedule, clearly not women and children first as it was the males that were snuffling up the sunflower seeds, cracking them open and scooping out the meat with their thick, curling tongues, blackening the snow with shells.

The motorcycle gang, I called these birds, gold slashes above the eyes like cool yellow sunglasses, wings glossy as black leather jackets with a startling white blaze. My sons were at school; my husband at work. I stood alone at the sliding-glass doors, counting. A hundred birds, at least.

Silvery females were jostling for seed now. Suddenly they fluttered up, a small explosion, leaving a strange, golden bird alone on the tray.

***

I met Louise de Kiriline Lawrence in 1980, just a few years before the golden bird landed on both our feeding trays. She was an imposing woman—tall, square-jawed, and high-cheeked with plain Scandinavian features, her hair clipped sensibly short though still elegant, her clothes finely made and artfully chosen. A handsome, no-nonsense woman with penetrating eyes. I was barely thirty, living in the bush with two young boys scarcely in school. I had just written my first book; she had just published her last, although neither of us knew that then.

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