“Wild Hope is the only book whose table of contents alone gave me chills. Gayle Boss yearns to show us that we live in a miracle. This is a beautifully elegant, deeply excellent book, pursued by grace on every page, in every stunning illustration.”

Carl Safina, ecologist, MacArthur Fellow, NYT best-selling author of Beyond Words and Becoming Wild

“Gayle Boss writes vividly of wild creatures as expressions of God’s own self—and of God’s own suffering. What better subject for Lent? Here’s a compelling way to wake into a deeper compassion and to meet there the One who transforms suffering into something unimaginably new. That’s the wild hope of all creatures!”

Richard Rohr, OFM, author, founder, The Center for Action and Contemplation

“This book is full of power and poignancy, love and lament. Lament is a cry of truth- telling, and in Gayle Boss’s portraits of these exquisite creatures we hear the necessary and devastating truth of what we are losing. Lament is also a doorway to new life, to the resurrection that Lent promises.”

Christine Valters Paintner, PhD, founder, Abbey of the Arts; author of Dreaming of Stones: Poems

"This is an overpoweringly beautiful little book, a labor of love that will yield much reflection and I hope much commitment to the work of safeguarding what’s left of God’s creation."

Bill McKibben, winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize; author, founder of 360.org.

“Wild Hope is a restorative and subversive little book. Each account is precise and scientifically rich, but the writing captures you with its creativity, generosity, and loveliness. There is great pain in contemplating our intertwined ecological crises. This is a field guide for navigating that pain with gracefulness and humility, and for seeking hope among the ruins.”

Timothy R. Van Deelen, Beers-Bascom Professor in Conservation, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Gayle Boss’s detailed, vivid accounts of an ark-full of wild lives in danger as our climate changes convinced and challenged me. In these stories and powerful woodcut images the beauty of living wild beings is revealed as designed and beloved of the Creator.”

Luci Shaw, author of The Thumbprint in the Clay; Writer in Residence, Regent College

Wild Hope

The Backstory

In 2016, I was only dimly aware of the extinction crisis. I knew only of the most egregious examples, like elephants shot and their faces butchered for their tusks. Looking back, I think that probably I wasn’t aware of the extent of wild animal suffering because I was afraid to look at that suffering directly. Until, in one photo, that suffering looked at me, and I couldn’t look away.

In the December 2016 issue of National Geographic, I saw a picture of eight baby orangutans—orphans—in a wheelbarrow. A few days later, a friend gave me an article on that amazing, imperiled shorebird, the red knot. The global wave of wild animal suffering caught me up, and I knew I needed to write about it.

I was terrified. I didn’t know if I could trust St. Paul, who told the Romans that the “groaning of all creation” presaged an impending birth. I didn’t want to proclaim a cheap resurrection. I wanted to do an honest exploration of the facts of extinction to see if the present suffering is, in fact, seeded with resurrection.

To my surprise, I found, among the ruin, seeds of hope. Small seeds, seeds that you won’t even see unless you get up close, seeds that may not be big enough to count as hope for some. But small like the mustard seed in Jesus’s story, the seed that grows into a plant so big it gives rest and a home to all the birds of the air.