The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Both the author and narrator of The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl was born and raised in the American South and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, a place she’s deeply tied to through memory, family, and a strong sense of place. Her observations are grounded in a specific geography, as becomes apparent whenever she describes the quiet corners of suburban Tennessee that teem with overlooked life. Even in the “typical suburban monoculture” (175), she describes a world brimming with life of all types.

Renkl’s wonder at this natural world distinguishes her writing. Her commitment to documenting beauty in the ordinary establishes her as a writer rooted in attentiveness. Her perspective emerges from a worldview shaped by ecological concern, a reverence for the sacred in the mundane, and a firm belief in the capacity of local action to foster environmental hope. She sees the natural world not as something distant or untouched but as something lived with, something that is shared, grieved, and sustained. Her writing draws deeply from the specificities of Tennessee while speaking to universal patterns of life and loss that are common to the American experience. This makes her the ideal narrator, as she seeks to reach those intimately familiar with this experience themselves.