Raising Hare: A Memoir

Written by Chloe Dalton

Narrated by Louise Brealey

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.

*This audiobook includes a bonus conversation between the author and narrator, available in audio only.

“A beautiful book that 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.”
—Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 4, 2025
• ISBN: 9798217018734

Reviews for Raising Hare

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful little book...

[infjsarah · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such an unusual book - about a creature that like most people I have never thought much about other than as a slightly larger rabbit. I know better now. A contemplation on how we think about wildlife and how we should deal with wildlife. I expected a sad end and while there is some of that, it's not just that - there is gratitude too. Well worth reading.

[bobbieharv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

She discovers a hare in her garden while marooned there during the pandemic. As the hare grows to trust her it often sleeps inside, and even gave birth to leveretts inside her cottage. Interesting account of hares' behavior. Got a little dull toward the end.

[barclay.dunn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful. I only wish it had had photographs of Hare and the others. An absolutely charming and honest delight.

[carolfoisset · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

very enjoyable listen (accents included) Mix of memoir, history, and science was well done. interesting to ponder how this little creature had such an impact on Dalton.

[bookwren · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A gentle, place-based story that helped me to see hares in a new light and to confirm my own feelings of the value and beauty of staying home. Deeply researched from old accounts by early scientists, hunters, and current biologists for a well-rounded treatise. Dalton overturns many of the old sayings of "mad as a March hare" with her observations of the patience, dignity, and strength of Hare. She advocates for protection of hares in England as they are currently on an "open season" for hunting/eradicating year-round (see her Instagram account, ChloeDaltonUK, for her posts and lovely photos of Hare and her leverets). Includes endpaper maps, warm pencil illustrations by Denise Nestor, and a Selected Bibliography.

[mal2012-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a beautiful book- made my shed tears at times, laugh, want to see a hare in the wild and realized how wonderful they are. A book that is so uplifting you won’t want it to end. Loved loved it. One of the best books of the year for me:)

[technodiabla · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this in audiobook format.

This short memoir is about an English woman in the foreign service who, during the COVID shutdown, retreats to her county house only to find a baby hare freezing in the snow. She saves it and raises it, but not as a pet. The book details her experience and envelops not just the hare itself but her changing attitudes towards humans' relationship to nature and wildlife. It's beautifully written, provides a lot of interesting information from her personal research into hares, and it not overly sad, as animal memoirs are apt to be. A great read for any lover of wildlife and conservancy.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved it! I appreciate her commitment to "letting" hare be hare but sharing space and learning from hare's responses. I'm glad Dalton learned how to see and to be a good a steward for the part of the natural world she could influence. Bravo.

[lukespapa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This memoir should be on everyone's list of books to read, and own, and at the top of the list at that. A beautiful account of one woman's encounter with an abandoned leveret - a wild baby hare, or European rabbit. Retreating to the English countryside as a result of the pandemic lockdown, political advisor, Chloe, finds a leveret in the field and debates whether to leave it, surely to die, or to try and rescue it, almost surely to have it die as hares cannot be domesticated. What follows is a wonderous story of a life-changing event, both for the leveret but certainly for the author. The author writes, "...then perhaps we can see all nature in a hare: its simplicity and intricacy, fragility and glory, transience and beauty." Written with such detail, the author has done all of us a favor, in sharing her story of love (of nature) and appreciation for what surrounds us, if we care to look more closely. Such an inspiring book written this well rarely comes around and the reader cannot help but be uplifted by the magical bond that develops between a wild animal and a human. The illustrations throughout the pages are a real bonus. Do yourself a favor and put down whatever book you are currently reading and pick this one up. You will be glad that you did.

[kalliegrace · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

4.5 stars, this is a lovely book about discovering the hare while semi-raising it. I love the gentle, curious way the author interacted with the hare and her babies. How special. there was very little memoir here aside from her life with the hare.

[aadyer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A brilliant memoir of the pandemic, a different way of life, and a way of looking at nature and nature writing in a very different way. This was an incredibly moving and very environmental look at modern British attitudes towards wildlife.

[bookappeal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A tender memoir detailing a woman's evolving relationship with a wild hare that expands her outlook on the nature around her, and forces her to reconsider her own nature as well.

[dele2451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful, charming, and richly descriptive. The bibliography is also a welcome addition to this memoir. A lovely book I would recommend to anyone.

[jusi_3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A reminder of what nature has to offer and how we ignore and trash it to our detriment

[juliestielstra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A lovely, touching memoir about a woman and a hare. Hares are not your typical cottontail bunnies: they are lean, tough, brave, muscular, and smart. Chloe Dalton stumbles on a tiny newborn whose mother did not appear as expected, so she takes it in and fumbles her way through caring for it. What makes this story a little different from many other wildlife bonding memoirs is how Dalton decides to relate to this little being: she doesn't know its sex, she doesn't name it, she doesn't crate or cage it, inside or out. Hare makes its own choices about where to sleep, what to eat, when and how to come and go. Hare turns out to be female, and produces babies of her own, who bustle in and out of Dalton's house at will. Absolutely lovely illustrations by Denise Nestor scamper across the endpapers and throughout the pages. Highly recommended.

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In December of 1973 we brought home a Dutch rabbit who we house trained to a litter box. But before Nasturtium, we raised a litter of wild bunnies. Their nest was in a garden plot scheduled to be rototilled. We feed them every two hours, treated them for worms, and released them at the age their mother would have abandoned them.


the baby bunnies we raised
Reading Raising Hare, how Chloe Dalton cared for an injured hare and the relationshpip they created, brought back memories of our bunnies. Although the British hare and the American cottontail are different species, they share many common traits. The deliberate and thorough grooming, the way they settle down with their feet under them, eyes closed, gritting their teeth. The way they stretch out and open their mouth wide as if in a yawn.

I loved reading this gentle, thoughtful memoir. Dalton writes with precision and grace. Caring for the injured leveret required decisions to protect it’s wildness. She opened doors so the hare could come and go at will. Its routine brought it back to sleep during the day, even when grown and running at night with the other hare. It raised its young in Dalton’s garden, and even made a nest in the house.

Dalton understood the remarkable gift she was given to live so close in parallel with a wild creature and gave the hare space to be.

Coexistence gives our own existence greater poignancy, and perhaps even grandeur. My wish now is for an environment that is safer for hares and other creatures of the land, wherever they may life: not at the expense of humans, but in balance with our priorities. from Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

The experience brought Dalton to grapple with larger issues of human impact on the habitat of animals. Most hare are killed by industrial farming, and extensive farmland has destroyed their environment.

This memoir is sure to become a perennial favorite of nature writing.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book.