Left Bank Books, in downtown Belfast, invites the public to meet Helen Whybrow, the multi-talented author of The Salt Stone: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life. The free talk and book signing will take place Thursday, March 5, at 7 p.m., at the bookshop.

Whybrow and her partner live and work on an old two-hundred-acre sheep farm in the heart of Vermont’s Green Mountains.

"The Salt Stones is her intimate and profoundly moving story of what it means to care for a flock and truly inhabit a piece of land," said a Left Bank Books news release.

The shepherd’s life unfolds for Whybrow in the seasons and cycles of farming and family—birthing lambs, fending off coyotes, rescuing lost sheep in a storm, and raising children while witnessing her mother’s decline. Exploring the interdependence of animals, as well as of the earth and ourselves, Whybrow reflects on the ways sheep connect her to place and to the ancient practice of shepherding. 

The Salt Stones was published in 2025 and garnered numerous prestigious awards. It was long-listed for the National Book Award, a New England Book Award finalist, a PBS NewsHour Summer Reading Recommendation, an Esquire “Best Books of Summer,” and The New Yorker’s “Best Books of 2025.” 

Whybrow writes that one of her lifelong joys is sitting on the ground, by a river or in the mountains, simultaneously immersed in the living world and in a good book. The best books, she believes, have the potential to make something mundane come alive on a mystical plane and to cause readers to think about something ordinary in a completely new way.

Prior to moving to Knoll Farm, Whybrow was Editor-in-Chief of Countryman Press/W.W. Norton for seven years and eight years at Orion Magazine. She has a master’s in journalism from Harvard, is a visiting professor at Middlebury College, and has taught writing at Breadloaf Environmental Writer’s Conference and the Iowa Summer Writer’s Workshop, among others.

Reservations for the free event are recommended as seating is limited. To make a reservation, call Left Bank Books at 207-338-9009, or email: info@leftbankbookshop.com. Ample free parking is available in front of the shop at 109 Church Street, and in an adjacent city lot.