The best nature-soaked books I’ve read in 2025 (so far)
Stories that remind you who you are when the wild is watching.
There’s a special kind of story that smells like pine needles and river water. In the past six months, I found six of them.
These are books (five novels and a memoir) where the landscape is more than just a backdrop; it’s a character, a teacher, a test. The kind of books that make you want to lace up your boots, or maybe just lie still and listen to the wind a little longer (one of them actually made me want to learn construction).
Each one reminded me, in its own way, that nature not only challenges us, it changes us.
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💦 The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
For fans of: gritty heroines, Michigan wildlands, swamp mysticism
This novel skips the part where it eases you in and instead dunks you headfirst into the marsh. Set in rural Michigan (my home state), The Waters follows herbalist and healer Hermine "Herself" Zook, who lives on the edge of everything: society, the law, and the muddy water she calls home.
Campbell’s writing pulses with life—messy, resilient, sometimes violent. It's a world of women fending for themselves, shaping their own codes of power and care. There’s something ancient in it. Something that reminds you how many of our deepest truths live in the body, in the land.
🌀 On the trail: What would it look like to trust your own instincts the way Herself trusts hers?
🏞️ Go As A River by Shelley Read
For fans of: coming-of-age stories, rivers-as-metaphor, slow-burning strength
This book is a quiet gut-punch. Set in post-WWII Colorado, it follows Victoria Nash as she tries to find her place in a town—and a family—that seems to have no room for who she really is.
The landscape here goes beyond beautiful and becomes redemptive. When Victoria flees into the mountains, grief in her chest and survival on her mind, the wilderness becomes a mirror: vast, dangerous, healing.
It’s a book that reminded me how closely courage and solitude often travel together.
🌀 Reflection question: Where do you go to remember who you are?
🏝️ Isola by Allegra Goodman
For fans of: historical fiction, survival stories, women who refuse to disappear
This might be the most elemental book I’ve read all year. Based on a true 16th-century woman abandoned on an island in New France (near modern-day Montreal), Isola is a novel of snow, silence, and staggering strength.
Marguerite, once destined for pearls and parlors, is betrayed and cast out—left to die with her lover on a barren rock in the middle of winter (the bear scene nearly did me in). But what she builds instead is a new self, hewn from hunger, faith, and a refusal to give in.
This is truly a grit story. And it’ll stay with you like frostbite.
🌀 On the trail: When everything fell apart, who did you become?
🌲 The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
For fans of: literary thrillers, rich atmosphere, family secrets buried deep in the trees
Set in the Adirondacks, this novel starts with a missing girl—and unfolds into a haunting meditation on privilege, power, and the dangerous myth of innocence.
But what really got me? The forest. Dense, looming, alive. Moore renders nature not as refuge, but as witness. A silent accomplice. A place where truths hide just beneath the leaf litter, waiting.
It made me think about how the wild can reflect the best of us—or the things we’d rather forget.
🌀 Reflection question: What stories live in the woods you grew up near?
🪵 CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison
For fans of: memoirs, DIY disasters, Pacific Northwest vibes, and biting off more than you can chew
Wit’s End is the name of the gravel road where Patrick Hutchison bought a falling-down, 120-square-foot off-grid cabin. It’s also a pretty accurate description of where he spends most of this memoir.
If you’ve ever romanticized the idea of living in the woods, CABIN delivers the necessary reality check—with a lot of charm and sawdust. Hutchison chronicles six years of trial, error, and YouTube-learned carpentry as he restores his mossy mountain retreat, often with nothing but stubbornness and a borrowed power tool.
But here’s the surprise: beneath the self-deprecating humor and wonky rooflines, this is a love story. Not to perfection, but to possibility. The kind that blooms when you dare to believe you can build something out of nothing—even when you have no clue what you're doing. I absolutely loved this book.
🌀 On the trail (or at the workbench): When was the last time you chose to begin something before you were “ready”?
🌬️ Wild, Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
For fans of: lyrical prose, bleak beauty, nature as both balm and blade
This novel was my first five-star read of the year. In it, McConaghy returns to the themes that made Migrations and Once There Were Wolves so haunting—loss, wildness, and women on the edge of breaking.
Set along a rugged coastline, Wild, Dark Shore explores love, grief, and the instinct to run toward danger when it’s the only thing that feels real. Her characters are raw and yearning; her landscapes, cold and brutal and weirdly comforting. (Read my review here.)
🌀 On the trail: What part of you only comes alive when you’re completely alone?
Final Thoughts
If these books have one thing in common, it’s this: Nature doesn’t save you. It strips you down until you remember how to save yourself.
I’d love to hear from you: What’s the most outdoorsy novel or memoir that’s stayed with you? What story made you feel like you’d just come back from the woods, even if you never left the couch?
(Also, have you read any of these—and if so, what did you think?)
📬 Hit reply or drop a comment—I’m always looking for the next good read (or trailhead).
Go as a river was one of my favorite books from last year. I met the author at a literary conference and was dazzled by her story of publishing her first novel at midlife. I’ve gifted this book and was so glad to see it on your list. I've got God of the woods on hold at the library.
Kevin Fedarko, "A Walk in the Park."