'The Comfort of Crows' is fuel to restore spirts in dealing with ecological grief

After the death of her mother, Margaret Renkl tenderly placed in an antique jar the "soft white hair" left behind in her mother's hairbrush. Years passed. When it no longer carried the scent she cherished, Renkl laid the hair across a holly branch in her yard.

This act was meant as a direct invitation to the birds in her yard, and it was accepted: A chickadee flew off with the hair for the nest she was building.

Renkl devotes only a half-page to this story, Starting in winter and continuing through the seasonal round, Renkl brings alive in 52 chapters her love for the animals and plants in her half-acre yard in Tennessee and in nearby parks. Equally moving, she confesses her despair at the human-caused crises the natural world faces, and her determination not to sit idle. "The very least I owe my wild neighbors is a willingness to witness their struggle, to compensate for their losses in every way I can, and to speak on their behalf about all the ways I can't," she writes.