United States
£ GBP
Longlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize.
What is home? It's a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. A longed-for career in psychiatry saw her leave behind the pristine beaches and emerald hills of Trinidad. Until, disillusioned, she uprooted again, this time for the peaceful English countryside. The only Black woman in her village, Marchelle hopes to grow a new life. But when a worldwide pandemic and a global racial reckoning collide, the upheaval of colonialism that has led her to this place begins to be unearthed. Is this really home? And can she ever feel truly grounded here?
Drawn to her new garden, Marchelle begins to examine this complex and emotional question through the psychotherapeutic lens of her work. As her relationship with the garden deepens, she discovers that her two conflicting identities are far more intertwined than she had realised. Full of hope and healing, Uprooting is a book about finding home where we least expect it, and which invites us to reconnect to the land – and ourselves.
Marchelle Farrell is a therapist, writer and amateur gardener. Born in Trinidad and Tobago, she has spent the last twenty years attempting to become hardy in the UK. She has trained and worked as a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist. When not neglecting it for the care of her young children, or her work in the community, Marchelle spends much of her time getting to know her country garden in Somerset and writing about the things the garden teaches her about herself. Her debut Uprooting won the Nan Shepherd Prize.
– Shortlisted for the James Cropper Wainwright Prize Longlist 2024 for UK Nature Writing
– Winner of the Nan Shepher Prize
– A Countryfile Christmas gift book
"A beautiful memoir that shows how gardens can be a place to plant our most troubled feelings, to put down roots and to find peace"
– Katherine May
"A tender book, raw in some parts [...] Farrell generously shows the reader the value of openness, considering what we have to learn from other people and species"
– Amanda Thomson, Times Literary Supplement
"Glistening [...] This book will change how we speak of gardens, land and identity in myriad ways. An exquisite love letter [and] a rallying call"
– Irish Times
"Uprooting is a potent hymn to the importance of home and a deeply thoughtful offering on what our gardens can be"
– Alice Vincent
"A wonderful book"
– Financial Times
"Stunning [...] The power of [Farrell's] prose, her skilful observation and her uncanny ability to weave together science and spirituality comes alive in this memoir"
– NB Magazine
"Emotive [...] [Farrell] uses her plot to as a lens from which to consider place, people and planet. At times universal, at other times, strikingly personal"
– Gardens Illustrated
"Can the shifting sands upon which a diasporic life is built ever begin to settle? In her search for belonging, Farrell co-creates a garden and considers the wider cultural and political landscapes that have shaped her. A beautiful entanglement of soil and soul"
– Jini Reddy
"Uprooting is at once tender and direct – as lyrical in its descriptions of home landscapes as it is scathing on the still-living legacies of colonisation. Farrell has given us a profoundly honest portrait of plants, place and the shifting of spirit wrought by migration"
– Jessica J Lee
"In this beautiful book, Marchelle Farrell excavates the troubled legacies of colonialism and her own uprooting as she brings her Somerset garden back to life. Over the course of a year she pours love into the depleted soil and is rewarded with an abundance – of plants, insights and friendships – and, most importantly, a sense of finding home"
– Lulah Ellender
