'A long-time confidante of the rain and snow I am ninety years old. The rain and snow have
weathered me and I too have weathered them' At the end of the twentieth century an old
woman sits among the birch trees and reflects on the joys and tragedies that have befallen her
people. A member of the Evenki tribe who wander the forests of north-eastern China hers was a
life lived in close sympathy with nature at its most beautiful and cruel. Then in the 1930s
the intimate secluded world of the tribe is shattered when the Japanese army invades China.
The Evenki cannot avoid being pulled into the brutal conflict that marks the beginning of the
end of life as they know it. 'An atmospheric modern folk-tale the saga of the Evenki clan of
Inner Mongolia - nomadic reindeer herders whose traditional life alongside the Argun river
endured unchanged for centuries... This is a fitting tribute to the Evenki by a writer of rare
talent' Financial Times VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our
relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism a blast of fresh
air a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we
inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.
