Born of Fire and Rain
If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you’d be wise to learn how it works. The giant, old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world. Born of Fire and Rain takes readers into the Pacific temperate rainforest at the tumultuous edge of a shifting continent in a precarious moment of time. Readers peek behind the magnificent scenery into a lively place of exploding mountains, ancient trees, disappearing owls, tsunamis, mega-fires, and ten million people, to learn what it means to be a forest in a world of upheavals. Through words and pictures, readers drift into the canopy through masses of ferns and lichens, burrow down into soil through hair-thin threads of fungi, and plunge headlong through a watershed flushed with rain and snowmelt. Readers experience the temperate rainforest through science and art as it faces a shifting climate and shifting priorities of a constantly changing society. The book journeys beyond the grid of latitude and longitude, into places only your imagination can fit, to discover what it means to be human in an ecological world.
Author Interviews: Born of Fire and Rain
Born of Fire & Rain Trailer
New Day Northwest TV Interview
Benton County Library Random Review
Carly Solstrum Reviewer
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Born of Fire and Rain Reviews
“Herring is an ecologist and science communicator from Oregon, whose obvious awe and admiration for the region comes through in every evocative description and illustration in this book…Born of Fire and Rain is a celebration of a unique forest that has survived for millennia and a timely reminder that we are an integral and powerful part of
the ecosystems that we study.”
—Catherine Walker, in Nature: Plants 10, 1847 (2024).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-024-01875-w
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“[Herring] has crafted an invitation in which you, the reader, are continually called on to pay attention to the precarious and changing nature of this corner of the earth and to consider its uncertain future.”
—Myka Hyman, in Plant Perspectives Vol.2 No.2 (2025) pg 465–46
Vol. 2 No. 2 (2025): Tree Cultures and the Arboreal Humanities
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“Herring has a particularly appealing and effective writing style that melds clear and easy-to-understand information about her subjects with a narrative voice that is decidedly personal and familiar. Enhancing her descriptions and explanations of the flora, fauna, geology, and all the other aspects of her subject Pacific temperate rainforest ecosystem are her truly lovely black and white illustrations that expand upon her words visually in ways that not only provide visual support to her narrative but convey the often enshadowed environment so widely found in these forested areas through their monochromatic sublimity.”
—John E. Riutta, in The Well-Read Naturalist
https://www.wellreadnaturalist.com/2025/07/born-of-fire-and-rain/
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“Born of Fire and Rain covers the heights of rainswept canopies of some of the world’s tallest trees and the subterranean depths of clashing tectonic plates lying beneath the Pacific Ring of Fire. Along the way we meet elk and beavers, salmon and spotted owls, 1,000-year-old Douglas firs and the magnificent lettuce lichen, Lobaria oregana, which plays a vital role in the rainforest’s nitrogen cycle. The text is illustrated throughout with the author’s evocative pen-and-ink drawings.”
—Guy Shrubsole, in The (London) Times Literary Supplement
https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/in-brief/born-of-fire-and-rain-m-l-herring-book-review-guy-shrubsole
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“M.L. Herring gets it. She’s been here [in the Pacific Northwest] since the 1970s. She’s a professor emerita of science communication, with an ecology background. She studied salmon, she keeps sketchbook nature journals, and she’s been part of the modern day environmental movement practically from when it started. She’s the ideal person to write a book about the forest, its origins, how it has changed, and what its future might be.”
—A.J. Reardon, in Book Blogger
https://ajreardon.com/book-review-born-of-fire-and-rain-by-m-l-herring/
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“Born of Fire and Rain is filled with deeply researched scientific stories about the adaptations and intricacies at work in ancient forests. Beautifully written and illustrated, inviting, and up-to-the-minute, this wonderful and remarkable book is a rewarding and enjoyable read. It will appeal especially to readers who liked
Braiding Sweetgrass or Finding the Mother Tree.”
—Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth’s Wild Music
“The Douglas-fir forests of the Pacific Northwest region of North America are nearly without rival in the world, and their distinctions have rarely been fully appreciated. M. L. Herring beautifully captures their story.”
—Jerry F. Franklin, University of Washington College of the Environment
“This is a passionate and extremely readable tribute to the Pacific Northwest forests, giving readers a true sense of the importance, ecology, and special sanctuary of these trees.”
—Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut
“This thrilling book, charged with awe, compassion, humility, and wonder, takes us on an unforgettable journey among ancient giants and unstable terrain. In the face of environmental disaster, M. L. Herring offers real hope for a shared future springing from new ways of seeing, imagining, and understanding our astonishing planet.”
—Fiona Stafford, author of The Long, Long Life of Trees
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