Helen Macdonald's memoir interweaves her grief at her father's sudden death with her experience training a goshawk, one of the most challenging birds in falconry. Macdonald, a naturalist and historian of science, had trained hawks before but was drawn to the goshawk's wildness and difficulty as a way of managing overwhelming loss. The narrative follows her acquisition of the hawk Mabel and the daily work of training, a process that absorbed her attention completely even as she struggled to function in normal life. Macdonald alternates her own story with that of T.H. White, author of The Once and Future King, who attempted to train a goshawk in the 1930s and produced a memoir that fascinated her as a child. White's attempt failed spectacularly, his psychological struggles undermining the patience falconry requires. Macdonald analyzes how White's closeted homosexuality and self-destructive tendencies shaped his relationship with his hawk, using his failure to illuminate her own journey. The book explores the strange intimacy of training a wild creature, the ways grief deranges normal experience, and the slow process of returning to human connection. Macdonald writes about nature with precision and emotion, creating a meditation on wildness, loss, and the unexpected paths toward healing.