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A Memoir
by Chloe Dalton
Book Reviewed by:A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman's unlikely friendship with a wild hare.
Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
In February 2021, Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare—a leveret—that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how impossible it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton's house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, stoats, feral cats, raptors, and even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death.
Raising Hare chronicles their journey together, while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore. We witness first-hand the joy at this extraordinary relationship between human and animal, which serves as a reminder that the best things, and most beautiful experiences, arise when we least expect them.
Part 1
CHAPTER ONE
A WINTER LEVERET
'Siberians name hares by the time of their birth: nastovik (born in March, when snow is covered with crust), letnik (born in summer), listopadnik (born in the fall, when leaves fall from trees)'
–A.A Cherkassov Notes of an East Siberian Hunter, 1865
Standing by the back door, I heard a dog barking, followed by the sound of a man shouting. I jammed my feet into my boots and walked across the gravel to the wooden gate to look for the cause of the disturbance. There was no reason for a dog to be nearby. The barn where I lived stood alone in a broad expanse of arable farmland, quartered with streams and hedgerows and interspersed with stands of silent woodland. I had grown up with stories of poachers cutting through locks and forcing open gates to drive onto the farmers' fields and into the woods, hunting deer and rabbits or setting their dogs to chase hares. More benignly, dogs had been known to bolt from their owners walking down the lane, in ...
What are you reading this week? (04/10/2025)
I'm reading Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. I'm a little over halfway through it and really enjoying it! I'm also reading sections of Finnegans Wake as a readalong…this one is tough!
-Jennie_Reece
What are you reading this week? (4/3/2025)?
I'm reading (and loving) Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton. It's a beautiful little book - I'm slowing myself down so I don't finish too soon.
-Evonne_Benedict
What are you reading this week? (3/27/2025)
I am currently listening to The Ride of Her Life by Elizabeth Letts. Best of the Northwoods by Annelise Ryan and Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton are in my audiobook queue. A minor break in the rainy stormy Pacific Northwest weather is making it easier to simultaneously enjoy two of my favorite...
-Sunny
Raising Hare is a beautifully written book about a woman's unexpected encounter with a wild hare (a leveret), and her experience with its care. Ms. Dalton is remarkably responsible and thoughtful about how she does this, trying everything possible to allow it to remain wild (Molly B). The irony in the title of Chloe Dalton's memoir Raising Hare is that the author tried so very hard NOT to raise the leveret she found on the roadside one winter's day…Instead, in the three years that Dalton covers, the hare raises Dalton's consciousness of her relation to the world of nature (Nona F)...continued
Full Review
(554 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows
Raising Hare is more than just a charming wildlife-rescue story. It's more even than a lively cultural and natural history of a gentle creature that is too often regarded as a nuisance. Perhaps most of all Raising Hare is a perfect testimony to the transformative power of love. In learning to love an orphaned hare, Chloe Dalton learned to love the whole wild world. The great gift of this remarkable book is the way it teaches us to do the same. Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library
Makes you think profoundly about how we so often tune out the natural world around us. Chloe Dalton is a tender, curious, wise, mind-expanding guide, connecting readers with the wild we humans once knew so well. I will be recommending this to everyone. Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring
The best books make you rethink how you relate to the world. This is one of those books. Quietly profound, beautifully written, Hare is now lodged in my heart.
While commenting on Chloe Dalton's memoir Raising Hare, about her experience rescuing a wild baby hare, some of our First Impressions reviewers mentioned the common misperception that a hare is a kind of a rabbit. So what exactly is a hare?
Hares and rabbits are related, but not the same. The hare is in the genus Lepus and falls into the Leporidae family, which is the same family rabbits belong to. Part of the reason the nomenclature is confusing is that these animals are often referred to interchangeably or in contradictory ways, presumably because humans have always gotten them mixed up or been unsure of how to categorize them. For example, what is commonly known as a jackrabbit in North America is actually a hare. Hares look ...
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