About this item
A grieving widow discovers a most unexpected form of healing - hunting for mushrooms. Long Litt Woon met Eiolf a month after arriving in Norway from Malaysia as an exchange student. They fell in love, married, and settled into domestic bliss. Then Eiolf's unexpected death at fifty-four left Woon struggling to imagine a life without the man who had been her partner and anchor for thirty-two years. Adrift in grief, she signed up for a beginner's course on mushrooming - a course the two of them had planned to take together - and found, to her surprise, that the pursuit of mushrooms rekindled her zest for life. The Way Through the Woods tells the story of parallel journeys: an inner one, through the landscape of mourning, and an outer one, into the fascinating realm of mushrooms - resilient, adaptable, and essential to nature's cycle of death and rebirth. From idyllic Norwegian forests and urban flower beds to the sandy beaches of Corsica and New York's Central Park, Woon uncovers an abundance of surprises often hidden in plain sight: salmon-pink Bloody Milk Caps, which ooze red liquid when cut; delectable morels - prized for their earthy yet delicate flavor; and bioluminescent mushrooms that light up the forest at night. Along the way, she discovers the warm fellowship of other mushroom obsessives, and finds that the act of giving her full attention to the natural world transforms her, opening a way for her to survive Eiolf's death, to see herself anew, and to reengage with life.
About the Author
Long Litt Woon (born 1958) , an anthropologist, grew up in Malaysia and went to Norway at age 18 as a student. There, she met and married a Norwegian man, Eiolf Olsen. After many happy years together, he suddenly died one day. Her first book "The Way Through The Woods. Of mushrooms and mourning" is about two journeys: an outer journey about her discovery of the Kingdom of Fungi and an inner journey about her grief. The book has been published in 14 territories and is longlisted for the Jan Michalski prize for Literature in 2019. Long (her surname) divides her time between Norway, Argentina and Malaysia. She updates her social media accounts regularly (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) .
