The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
by Elizabeth Tova Bailey
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 190 pp., $18.95
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
by John Vaillant
Knopf, 329 pp., $26.95
Whether birdsong at dawn or just a weed in a sidewalk, nature is all around us. Yet all too frequently we only appreciate it when it’s out of reach. For Elizabeth Tova Bailey, it was a mysterious disease that separated her from the natural world. But then a friend brought some violets in a flowerpot, into which she had placed a snail, and with that small gift came a deep reconnection with life, and a slow healing.





