The Bodley Head pre-empts Rix’s revisionist global history of trees

The Bodley Head has acquired tree science consultant Harriet Rix’s Earth, Wind and Fire: How Trees Mastered the Elements and Conquered the World.

Stuart Williams, publishing director, pre-empted world English language rights on the day of submission from Doug Young at PEW Literary. PRH’s Catherine Wood sold US rights at auction to Leah Trouwborst at Crown, and separately sold Canadian rights to Martha Kanya-Forstner at Knopf Canada. The Bodley Head will publish in hardback, e-book and audio in summer 2025.

Its synopsis reads: “We know that fungi and trees co-exist in an intimate, sophisticated ‘wood wide web’, to the benefit of both. What we have not appreciated, until now, is the far greater extent of trees’ capacity to interact with and even control their environment.

“Earth, Wind and Fire restores trees to their rightful position as agents and protagonists in a grand ecological narrative, describing the inventive and astonishing means by which they can shape, sculpt and even master their environments. Give a tree a lump of rock and some time, and it will make its own habitat.

“Some trees have been manipulating fire and using it as a tool for many millions of years before humans appeared. Some can split solid rock and create fertile new niches in otherwise barren landscapes, building ecosystems from scratch. Others go to extraordinary lengths to make their fruit accessible to the large primates which can spread their seeds over long distances (getting them slightly high in the process) while also poisoning smaller mammals which lack the capacity to travel far enough.

“On a journey across the globe and through time, from oaks growing in Devon and Amedi in Iraq, to the laurel rainforests of the Canary Islands and metasequoias in California, we discover that trees are not only able to farm the landscape in which they grow, sometimes with brutal efficiency, in order to create the most favourable habitat possible, but that they can also manipulate animals, humans and even the fundamental elements of our world to achieve their ends.”

Rix is a tree science consultant who was most recently supported at the UK charity the Tree Council by Defra to research tree diseases and urban tree strategies. Before joining the tree sector in 2018, her jobs included farming sheep near Parnassus in Greece, working in landmine clearance in Syria for UK charity the HALO Trust and for Danish Church Aid in Eastern Syria, and as a liaison officer for a US department of state-sponsored EID clearance programme in Baghdad and Anbar province. She acted as a scientific advisor on Adrien Grenier’s forthcoming climate documentary, was secretary for Hedgelink and is a trustee of the Iraqi environmental charity Hasar.

She is also a 2021/2022 London Library Emerging Writer, and her writing and photography have been published in the Financial Times, London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement, among others. Earth Wind and Fire will be her first book.

Rix said: “I’m honoured to be a part of The Bodley Head’s grand tradition of inspiring writers. A revisionist global history of trees — the greatest biochemistry-plumbing time-twisting globe-sweeping organisms on the planet — basically writes itself, and I’m thrilled it will get out to see the world.”

Williams said: “Harriet is a mesmerising writer. We expect her book to speak to the huge numbers of readers whose interests span science, nature, climate and who yearn for awesome and transporting answers to the daunting questions we face about our environment.”

Young added: “Harriet’s proposal was a revelation to me as a self-confessed tree hugger. It’s a jaw-dropping, wonderfully engaging and horribly urgent subject and she is a superb writer. I can’t wait to read the whole book.”