A breathtaking excerpt from the forthcoming memoir The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream was recently published in The Guardian. Katharine Norbury embarks with her daughter, Evie, on a journey to find the source of the River Severn as well as her own source–the mother who relinquished her for adoption. Katharine has been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer and wants to learn her biological family’s medical history, both for her own sake and Evie’s.

The memoir’s summary promises that the book combines “travelogue, memoir, exquisite nature writing and fragments of poems with tales from Celtic mythology.”

The release date for The Fish Ladder is February 12, and it is currently available for pre-order.