The wild earth and its consolations

When Eiren Caffall was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease in her early 20s, her physician said, “This isn’t what I wanted to be telling you.” The same might be said of Caffall’s new book, which is a song of both praise and lament for the earth. We want to hear a comforting story about how the planet is not really sick and everything will be fine, but that is not the story Caffall has to tell.

Caffall is a writer, singer-songwriter, teacher, environmental activist, and mother. The last item is especially notable because of the difficulty of her decision to have a child. PKD is an inherited kidney disease in which multiple cysts develop in the kidneys and cause bloating, pain, infections, fatigue, and kidney failure. Early mortality is common. Caffall grew up knowing of her vulnerability to the disease because several family members suffered from it and died too young from it. (When the doctor delivered her diagnosis, it was shocking but not exactly surprising.) She faced a dilemma: Should she choose to become a parent and pass along the vulnerability to a child? Her nephrologist told her that he knew how to end PKD in one generation: “People like you should never have children.”

Caffall decides to have a child anyway, noting, “It is easy to tell people that their existence, need, joy, vulnerability, humanity is the driver of collapse. It is harder for the world to change to protect vulnerable lives, human and nonhuman.” From early childhood, her son, Dex, displays a “tunnel focus on animal life,” and his very existence makes it clear that the nephrologist was wrong. Several family members make appearances throughout the narrative, and Caffall honors their complexity, especially when writing about her parents. But Dex, with his fraught biophilia, is the spiritual center of the book.