When you open the newspaper to flooding in Texas, ICE raids all over, celebration of a bill that will cut millions out of healthcare and political leaders cheering everything as if it were a Super Bowl victory, this is the kind of book that you need. Curl up on the couch and read about a leveret rescued from a grassy trail in the London countryside.

The author, Chloe Dalton, did not set out to raise or rescue a wild baby hare. Working from her country home outside of London during Covid, she puts her political advisor and speechwriter career on hold to spend some time outside of the city. And on a morning walk, she comes across this tiny leveret, about a day old, and is torn on what to do: leave it in the wild where it belongs, but where it clearly has no mother…or take it home and risk killing it with any human intervention, and perhaps compromising its ability to ever live in the wild.

She never names the animal, she tries not to touch it, she uses every resource she can find to properly nourish it in its infant state, and she always intends for it to go back into the wild once it can feed and protect itself. she recognizes over every decision, trying to respect the hairs needs while also giving it a boost in its life.

And so we get this beautiful and well written story of her relationship with a leveret, who eventually grows into an adult hare and eventually has three litters of its own, all the while going in and out of her house, over the garden wall, and into the fields and forest, sometimes for days at a time, and sometimes just overnight. It always returns of its own will, but each time it heads outside, she knows she may never see it again.

Her descriptions of the hare cautiously accepting drops of milk in its mouth, drowsing on the couch, rolling in the grasses, resting its paw on her leg, conquering the garden wall on its third try, nosing a stone, or hiding behind the curtain to birth a new litter are precious. 

Sometimes we just need a good story of the ways an animal can transform us and realign our priorities. Raising Hare is a delightful read.

And it makes clear the many differences between hares and rabbits.