In her first book, The Salt Path, Raynor Winn and her husband Moth walked several hundred miles around the south coast of England. They did this because they were destitute. They’d lost their home to bailiffs, and at the same time Moth had been diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, a brain disease for which there is no cure or even treatment. And so they set off, with sleeping bags and camp stoves, and walked. As they walked, meeting other homeless people along the way, and living, quite literally, in nature, Moth’s condition gradually improved; in fact it went away. The Salt Path was a sensation and rightly so. Winn’s third book, Landlines (Penguin Random House), finds Ray and Moth living on a farm in Cornwall. However, Moth’s disease has come back, and he is getting worse. Not knowing what else to do, they set off once again to walk. This time they walk the Cape Wrath Trail, 320 km through the wilds of Scotland’s mountains, glens and lochs. It’s a difficult, even a perilous, journey. After surviving that, the pair continue walking south: to England. To home. When Winn writes about nature there’s a luminous beauty to the prose, and a powerful empathy for the endangered and those at risk, whether human or wild creatures. She explores themes familiar to readers of The Salt Path: climate change, extinction, migration, homelessness. Winn and her book are not without humour. Sometimes Winn and Moth are recognized along the way; at other times people tell them (not realizing who they’re speaking to) that they’re walking because they were inspired by The Salt Path, and: “Have you read it?” After the journey, when Moth has a new scan, well, there are tears. But happy ones.

—Peggy Thompson