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The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir
For readers of H Is for Hawk , an intimate memoir of belonging and loss and a mesmerizing travelogue through the landscapes and language of Wales
Hiraeth is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time—an acute awareness of the presence of absence.
In The Long Field , Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life—as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the daughter of a parent with dementia. Through the pull and tangle of these stories and her travels throughout Wales, hiraeth takes on radical new meanings. There is traditional hiraeth of place and home, but also queer hiraeth; and hiraeth triggered by technology, immigration, ecological crises, and our new divisive politics. On this journey, the notion begins to morph from a uniquely Welsh experience to a universal human condition, from deep longing to the creative responses to loss that Petro sees as the genius of Welsh culture. It becomes a tool to understand ourselves in our time.
A finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award and named to the Telegraph 's and Financial Times's Top 10 lists for travel writing, The Long Field is an unforgettable exploration of “the hidden contours of the human heart.”
Hiraeth is a Welsh word that's famously hard to translate. Literally, it can mean "long field" but generally translates into English, inadequately, as "homesickness." At heart, hiraeth suggests something like a bone-deep longing for an irretrievable place, person, or time—an acute awareness of the presence of absence.
In The Long Field , Pamela Petro braids essential hiraeth stories of Wales with tales from her own life—as an American who found an ancient home in Wales, as a gay woman, as the survivor of a terrible AMTRAK train crash, and as the daughter of a parent with dementia. Through the pull and tangle of these stories and her travels throughout Wales, hiraeth takes on radical new meanings. There is traditional hiraeth of place and home, but also queer hiraeth; and hiraeth triggered by technology, immigration, ecological crises, and our new divisive politics. On this journey, the notion begins to morph from a uniquely Welsh experience to a universal human condition, from deep longing to the creative responses to loss that Petro sees as the genius of Welsh culture. It becomes a tool to understand ourselves in our time.
A finalist for the Wales Book of the Year Award and named to the Telegraph 's and Financial Times's Top 10 lists for travel writing, The Long Field is an unforgettable exploration of “the hidden contours of the human heart.”
356 pages, Hardcover
Published August 15, 2023
33 people are currently reading
364 people want to read
About the author
Pamela Petro
6 books20 followersPamela writes books and essays, takes photos--which she sometimes prints on rocks, or purposely shoots out of focus by moving her camera- teaches, and lives with her partner (and forthcoming puppy!) in Northampton, MA. Her new book is called The Long Field - A Memoir, Wales, and the Presence of Absence. It's about how the small country of Wales became a big part of her life. When she's not writing, making art, traveling to Wales--or just traveling--or reading, cooking, playing tennis, and writing emails, she teaches Creative Nonfiction on Lesley University's MFA in Creative Writing Program and at Smith College. She's also Co-Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Creative Writing (open to everyone!) at the University of Wales Trinity St David, in Lampeter, Wales.
Here's her website: https://www.pamelapetro.com
Here's an essay she wrote that she really likes: https://www.harvardreview.org/content...
And here's another essay with some of her curious photos: https://www.guernicamag.com/shedding-...
Here's her website: https://www.pamelapetro.com
Here's an essay she wrote that she really likes: https://www.harvardreview.org/content...
And here's another essay with some of her curious photos: https://www.guernicamag.com/shedding-...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
October 4, 2021
How can somewhere that you have never visited feel like home immediately? It can and it does. For Pamela Petro, this happened the first time that she visited Wales to study for a Master’s Degree at a university English Department. She knew almost nothing about the place or the country or its particular and unique history, culture and especially its language. But she felt at home in this place. On returning to America, her family there wondered if the infatuation with Wales would fade over time.
It didn’t.
The was her first physical experience of the Welsh word, hiraeth. She had discovered it before when looking at a bilingual poster, on the English section the word was repeated in italics and she asked her friend, Andy why it hadn’t been translated. He replied saying that it couldn’t be translated. It would be a while before she would come to know the meaning herself, even though she had come across the inadequate ‘homesickness’ as an explanation. A close definition, if you could call it that, is the sense of being out of one’s home place.
The longer she was away, the greater the longing to be back there.
This multi-layered memoir is her exploration of her inner self and the feelings she has towards what has become her adopted country. But there is much more to this than just Wales, it is also about her parents, the train accident that nearly killed her, of her sexuality and long term partner, Marguerite, her teaching and her writing and travels for her book on the Welsh language. But this is mostly about Wales, how the people and their outlook have helped define who she is, the inevitable rain and relishing a sunny day and driving the slow and twisting roads to the coast.
She has a wonderful way with words in this book, managing to capture perfectly that first time that she knew that the landscape, people and language of Wales had for some reason always had a place in her heart. Even though the elusive meaning of hiraeth is very difficult to explain, what Petro does with this book is to tease out the multiple threads of meaning that this word has for her and how she has always sought it on her many trips to Wales. I am not sure I can explain it either, but I know when we moved from Surrey to Dorset, I felt a connection to this place that I didn’t have in Surrey. The is the first of Petro’s books that I have read, even though I have had Travels in An Old Tongue on my bookshelves at home for quite a while I have never got to read it. I am going to have to rectify that soon.
It didn’t.
The was her first physical experience of the Welsh word, hiraeth. She had discovered it before when looking at a bilingual poster, on the English section the word was repeated in italics and she asked her friend, Andy why it hadn’t been translated. He replied saying that it couldn’t be translated. It would be a while before she would come to know the meaning herself, even though she had come across the inadequate ‘homesickness’ as an explanation. A close definition, if you could call it that, is the sense of being out of one’s home place.
The longer she was away, the greater the longing to be back there.
This multi-layered memoir is her exploration of her inner self and the feelings she has towards what has become her adopted country. But there is much more to this than just Wales, it is also about her parents, the train accident that nearly killed her, of her sexuality and long term partner, Marguerite, her teaching and her writing and travels for her book on the Welsh language. But this is mostly about Wales, how the people and their outlook have helped define who she is, the inevitable rain and relishing a sunny day and driving the slow and twisting roads to the coast.
She has a wonderful way with words in this book, managing to capture perfectly that first time that she knew that the landscape, people and language of Wales had for some reason always had a place in her heart. Even though the elusive meaning of hiraeth is very difficult to explain, what Petro does with this book is to tease out the multiple threads of meaning that this word has for her and how she has always sought it on her many trips to Wales. I am not sure I can explain it either, but I know when we moved from Surrey to Dorset, I felt a connection to this place that I didn’t have in Surrey. The is the first of Petro’s books that I have read, even though I have had Travels in An Old Tongue on my bookshelves at home for quite a while I have never got to read it. I am going to have to rectify that soon.
September 27, 2021
Really enjoyed this one! Made my brain fizz and reminded me of many of the reasons I miss Wales - and the ones I don’t ;) Very readable!
October 13, 2025
Part sociological work on Wales and the deep, soul-set longing of hiraeth, part memoir, all excellent.
September 23, 2021
A memoir, Wales, and the presence of absence.
From conception to finish, it’s taken Pamela Petro eight years to write The Long Field. But it’s a memoir, so it demanded a lifetime of research. Petro writes about events from her own history, her own close relationships, and sews wider observations - about Wales and the world – into them. Her brush strokes are precise and piercing one second, broad and forgiving the next. Here’s the sky, blue-grey, applied with a roller. Then we’re going right in, stepping close to the canvas, to add detail to someone’s features, the shape of a cloud.
The knowing when to focus, when to take a step back, comes from years of reading, writing and teaching writing, in the USA and Wales.
‘As I’ve taught, I’ve become a better writer,’ Petro revealed in an interview with Nothing in the Rulebook last month. ‘Teaching has enabled me to write this book. Could I have written this book before I started teaching? I don’t know.’
The book is largely preoccupied with Petro’s experiences as a student in Wales, and the effect it had on her life later. Though she’d lived in a number of places by the time she was twenty-three – New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington DC, Cape Cod, France – her time in Wales was different.
‘…I found myself nodding, as if I were in agreement with the landscape. Its lucidity cut like a scalpel through mental images of all the other places I’d lived… It sliced through their forests and highways and towns and cities and clutter, peeling them away, down to the mental bedrock beneath – a primary place of understanding where memory and concept conjoin. And that place looked like Wales.’
Pretty much every sentence is like this: layered, vivid, earnest. Though her descriptions of landscapes are excellent and the explanations of its impact on her internal landscape are extremely moving, it’s her portraits of people that stand out. It was during her time studying in Wales that Petro began to understand her own sexuality – she writes about early, confusing relationships with honesty and the humility of hindsight. Her family are a constant thread in the book - their bonds are sometimes supportive, sometimes strained. The terrain is undulating, difficult to traverse. Over the course of the book, there are plenty of emotional entry points: plenty of places to stop, think, take in the view. There are also moments designed to trip you up. You thought you were reading this kind of book, but now it’s this kind of book. Petro shifts gears confidently between settings, scenes, mental states, draws your attention to the right thing at the right time.
It’s the kind of writing that comes from years of practise. It comes from reading, teaching, living. It comes from knowing the world is strange sometimes and unexplainable. That a place can be new to you, completely alien, and still feel like home.
This review was originally published here: https://nothingintherulebook.com/2021...
From conception to finish, it’s taken Pamela Petro eight years to write The Long Field. But it’s a memoir, so it demanded a lifetime of research. Petro writes about events from her own history, her own close relationships, and sews wider observations - about Wales and the world – into them. Her brush strokes are precise and piercing one second, broad and forgiving the next. Here’s the sky, blue-grey, applied with a roller. Then we’re going right in, stepping close to the canvas, to add detail to someone’s features, the shape of a cloud.
The knowing when to focus, when to take a step back, comes from years of reading, writing and teaching writing, in the USA and Wales.
‘As I’ve taught, I’ve become a better writer,’ Petro revealed in an interview with Nothing in the Rulebook last month. ‘Teaching has enabled me to write this book. Could I have written this book before I started teaching? I don’t know.’
The book is largely preoccupied with Petro’s experiences as a student in Wales, and the effect it had on her life later. Though she’d lived in a number of places by the time she was twenty-three – New Jersey, Rhode Island, Washington DC, Cape Cod, France – her time in Wales was different.
‘…I found myself nodding, as if I were in agreement with the landscape. Its lucidity cut like a scalpel through mental images of all the other places I’d lived… It sliced through their forests and highways and towns and cities and clutter, peeling them away, down to the mental bedrock beneath – a primary place of understanding where memory and concept conjoin. And that place looked like Wales.’
Pretty much every sentence is like this: layered, vivid, earnest. Though her descriptions of landscapes are excellent and the explanations of its impact on her internal landscape are extremely moving, it’s her portraits of people that stand out. It was during her time studying in Wales that Petro began to understand her own sexuality – she writes about early, confusing relationships with honesty and the humility of hindsight. Her family are a constant thread in the book - their bonds are sometimes supportive, sometimes strained. The terrain is undulating, difficult to traverse. Over the course of the book, there are plenty of emotional entry points: plenty of places to stop, think, take in the view. There are also moments designed to trip you up. You thought you were reading this kind of book, but now it’s this kind of book. Petro shifts gears confidently between settings, scenes, mental states, draws your attention to the right thing at the right time.
It’s the kind of writing that comes from years of practise. It comes from reading, teaching, living. It comes from knowing the world is strange sometimes and unexplainable. That a place can be new to you, completely alien, and still feel like home.
This review was originally published here: https://nothingintherulebook.com/2021...
February 21, 2022
This is a book about Hiraeth, or the Long Field, a Welsh term for a sense of dislocation and longing that Petro has studied in a lifelong love affair with Wales, but doesn't quite nail down. So much of the book is brilliant and beautiful and poetic. So much else is explanatory, where some narrative or simple cutting or even more linguistic exploration would have helped more. In the end, there are some insolvable problems: the book is spectacularly American, it accords specialness to Wales that can be found in other places as well, including in her America, where it ascribes such belonging to Indigenous peoples and no-one else, and she simply talks too much about herself, without the kind of narrative that would make it all come alive. I had a similar experience on first going to Wales, to Iceland, and in North America, but this Hiraeth? No. Still, I love Wales, I love language, and I found lots of both in this book. At its best, the book gets a 5. At its weakest, a 1. Petro is strongest at describing the people and places she loves, without interpreting them. A 3 is generous. If I were the editor of this book, I'd have cut 100 pages. I think it would have really shone at that length.
February 8, 2021
Pamela Petro's Long Field is a remarkable work that blends nature writing and memoir to examine the world and the author's place in it. A conflicted American that feels more at home in Wales, a gay woman in a straight society, a daughter enduring the slow death of parents, Petro writes about the longing to be elsewhere and for things to be otherwise.
But don't imagine for a moment that this is book about frustration, sorrow or languorous regret. No. A Long Field is about finding the creative impluse that comes from not quite belonging or -more accurately - from having a deep yearning for different or better. This is a book that looks forward with hope, rather than backwards with longing.
In examining both her own life and the history of Wales, Petro applies both fierce intelligence, extensive knowledge and redemptive compassion. I have come across few writers whose hearts are larger or more generous to the world and its people. Beyond all of this, the writing is simply beautiful - every sentence crafted like a gem stone.
I cannot recommend this book to you enough - it will open both your mind and your heart. I'm a better person having read it.
But don't imagine for a moment that this is book about frustration, sorrow or languorous regret. No. A Long Field is about finding the creative impluse that comes from not quite belonging or -more accurately - from having a deep yearning for different or better. This is a book that looks forward with hope, rather than backwards with longing.
In examining both her own life and the history of Wales, Petro applies both fierce intelligence, extensive knowledge and redemptive compassion. I have come across few writers whose hearts are larger or more generous to the world and its people. Beyond all of this, the writing is simply beautiful - every sentence crafted like a gem stone.
I cannot recommend this book to you enough - it will open both your mind and your heart. I'm a better person having read it.
December 8, 2021
I am very much a fiction reader 90% of the time but there are occasions when I like to read something different. The Long Field appealed to me because of the descriptiveness of the blurb and it really didn't disappoint.
It was so beautifully written and really captured my attention throughout. Despite having no connections to Wales I loved reading about the country and learning about the complexities of the word Hiraeth. It's not a word I've heard of before and now I can't get it out of my head.
This is a book to read slowly and savour to remember all the little details.
It was so beautifully written and really captured my attention throughout. Despite having no connections to Wales I loved reading about the country and learning about the complexities of the word Hiraeth. It's not a word I've heard of before and now I can't get it out of my head.
This is a book to read slowly and savour to remember all the little details.
March 2, 2024
I am personally acquainted with the author of this book and I most enjoyed the parts of the book where she talked about her life. Throughout the book, the author jumps around from past to present and from one location to another. This made it hard to follow at times. Her descriptions of the Welsh countryside painted vivid pictures and made it obvious how much she loves the area.
January 10, 2025
This book is easily one of the most important contributions to Welsh literature to be made by an American ever. Pamela Petro does an excellent job of exploring Hiraeth, an incredibly important concept in Welsh culture and language, through easily accessible personal anecdotes. Truly one of my favorite books I've read in recent years.
August 23, 2024
Lovely memoir about the Welsh concept of hireath, a kind of longing and homesickness.
October 12, 2021
Go get yourself a copy of this book right now. Pam is a prolific writer and storyteller, and this is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. She weaves the story of her life into the history of Wales, finding connections in the present day to legends from long ago. And of course her personal history in Wales shows just how entwined person and place can be. In Pam’s case, the two are inseparable. I love the way she described time, as if it folds on top of itself— it made me think about how time and experience and relationships aren’t linear, everything is happening all the time and perhaps we are just viewing it all through a singular, distorted sense. It’s something us humans can’t quite describe, though Pam comes pretty close. In one section she describes time as a thing that “recycles, repeats, is destroyed and renewed. Experience is round like the earth itself.” Pam describes a deep intimacy with time and place. Pam also describes Wales as being labeled as “other” throughout history, its people were called outsiders, they were the underdogs, they were different. Pam shares her own stories of being an outsider too, of being on the precipice of something. Her narrative illustrates the many ways that “hiraeth” has manifested in her life through the lenses of language, age, technology, creativity, queer love, and much more… in ways that are universal and extremely personal. I particularly appreciated the queer love story that is woven throughout all the chapters, as a queer person myself it was inspiring and emotional, and so vivid. An important story to put out into the world. I wanted to underline every sentence in the book. They all just HIT. In my head I kept screaming YES!!!!!!! Pam not only includes rich content, but she writes beautifully. Her words are rhythmic, thoughtful, and unexpected. They flow like the rolling hills in Wales, or the sound of the Welsh language itself. As a writer I was learning so much from her, observing the rich way she activated all the senses and linked all her words and phrases together in a poetic rhythm. Pam’s story is one about becoming in touch with the world on every level, from visceral geological touch to loving the people she is surrounded with and forming communities. Pam takes us on her journey to understand of the meaning of her life and how it relates to everything and everyone around her — as they are, as they were, and how they will be. Such a rich, beautiful read that is contemplative, inspiring, warm and so so fulfilling. There’s no way to do it justice in a review, but this book is absolutely 5/5 stars and you should go read it now!!
Here are a few quotes I pulled that I enjoyed (sorry I forgot to write down the page numbers):
“I found out pretty quickly I liked rain. The way it left my skin feeling intelligent and awake”
“The song—the flavor, the smell—of stones”
“Ahead of me the Beacons’ bald flanks were furrowed like elephant skin in clouded, ashes-of-roses light”
“‘Scarred her, it did,’ he said without anger, as if this were a story he’d known so long that all the rage had bled out of it.”
Here are a few quotes I pulled that I enjoyed (sorry I forgot to write down the page numbers):
“I found out pretty quickly I liked rain. The way it left my skin feeling intelligent and awake”
“The song—the flavor, the smell—of stones”
“Ahead of me the Beacons’ bald flanks were furrowed like elephant skin in clouded, ashes-of-roses light”
“‘Scarred her, it did,’ he said without anger, as if this were a story he’d known so long that all the rage had bled out of it.”
December 22, 2021
The Long Field is a lyrical memoir set in the Welsh countryside that tells stories through the lens of the Welsh word ‘hiraeth’. Hiraeth has no literal translation in English. In Welsh it means ‘long field,’ which describes the Welsh landscape in Petro’s story. Hiraeth also refers to ‘homesickness’ – a deep longing for an irretrievable elsewhere. An awareness of the presence of absence.
Petro had visited Wales for her Masters degree, and fell at once at home in a new place. On returning to America, her longing for the country didn’t fade. And so, she sought to describe her feelings about a place she never really knew, but felt she really belonged to. In The Long Field, she tells us her story, and the story of Wales itself.
Part research, part nature documentary, part travel experience, and part memoir, Petro braids the chapters of The Long Field to encompass her description of hiraeth. As a life story, the narrative isn’t linear. The book reads like a series of interconnected short stories. We learn about an American who pines for Wales; a gay woman in a same-sex relationship; a survivor of a horrific train wreck; a daughter of a parent with dementia. We learn about Wales itself and how the nation embeds experiences and emotions. Petro talks about hiraeth in terms of land and home – the physical space and the emotional connection. She addresses hiraeth in religion, technology, ancestry, gender, environment, politics. Over the course of the book, hiraeth evolves from an awareness of loss and longing to a creative response to loss.
The Long Field is a wonderfully written book. It isn’t a typical memoir, neither is it a collection of personal essays. It is one thing and many things, and Petro intertwines them all gracefully to show us hiraeth. The cover is beautiful, and just like a painting, Petro's palette of colors and brushes creates a masterpiece of prose.
Petro had visited Wales for her Masters degree, and fell at once at home in a new place. On returning to America, her longing for the country didn’t fade. And so, she sought to describe her feelings about a place she never really knew, but felt she really belonged to. In The Long Field, she tells us her story, and the story of Wales itself.
Part research, part nature documentary, part travel experience, and part memoir, Petro braids the chapters of The Long Field to encompass her description of hiraeth. As a life story, the narrative isn’t linear. The book reads like a series of interconnected short stories. We learn about an American who pines for Wales; a gay woman in a same-sex relationship; a survivor of a horrific train wreck; a daughter of a parent with dementia. We learn about Wales itself and how the nation embeds experiences and emotions. Petro talks about hiraeth in terms of land and home – the physical space and the emotional connection. She addresses hiraeth in religion, technology, ancestry, gender, environment, politics. Over the course of the book, hiraeth evolves from an awareness of loss and longing to a creative response to loss.
The Long Field is a wonderfully written book. It isn’t a typical memoir, neither is it a collection of personal essays. It is one thing and many things, and Petro intertwines them all gracefully to show us hiraeth. The cover is beautiful, and just like a painting, Petro's palette of colors and brushes creates a masterpiece of prose.
September 25, 2021
Rich and multi-layered, The Long Field is a wonderful meld of memoir, myth, history and nature. Pamela Petro takes the reader across the Atlantic from her home in the USA to her beloved Wales, 'shapeshifting in time and place'. She is a creature of two worlds, two homes, two continents, searching in both to resolve her feelings of restlessness and unbelonging and find her 'cynefin' (rootedness or sense of place). The book centres around the Welsh idea of 'hiraeth', the 'presence of absence'. This absence includes the loss of loved ones, friends, landscapes, and a younger, different self; The Long Field is that distance that separates you from what you yearn for on the other side of it. In crossing that long field, Petro makes new discoveries; of love, sexuality, and a knowledge of how the landscapes we inhabit ultimately change us.
Petro has a warm, inclusive style, that draws the reader in and makes the book hard to put down. Her vividly descriptive and finely-observed prose has us right there beside her, whether it's struggling up the mountains of Snowdonia, descending into the dark underland of Big Pit, or recovering from a near-fatal train crash in Baltimore. It is also a story of love; of family, place, language and a partner in whom she finds her ultimate cynefin.
Reading The Long Field is like discovering a lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and slotting it into place to complete the picture; like the finished jigsaw, it leaves you with a deep sense of contentment, and fills that small, still absence inside you.
Petro has a warm, inclusive style, that draws the reader in and makes the book hard to put down. Her vividly descriptive and finely-observed prose has us right there beside her, whether it's struggling up the mountains of Snowdonia, descending into the dark underland of Big Pit, or recovering from a near-fatal train crash in Baltimore. It is also a story of love; of family, place, language and a partner in whom she finds her ultimate cynefin.
Reading The Long Field is like discovering a lost piece of a jigsaw puzzle, and slotting it into place to complete the picture; like the finished jigsaw, it leaves you with a deep sense of contentment, and fills that small, still absence inside you.
November 12, 2023
This book was clearly a labor of love. The author loves Wales so much and wants to share that love with everyone around her. She goes in depth about why she feels so at home in Wales and what it is about her personality that resonated so much with the feel of the country. The writing is beautiful and well-done.
Unfortunately, I didn't really connect with this book as much as I thought I would, and I ultimately made the decision not to finish it. I've never been to Wales, but am currently planning a trip there. I hoped that this book would help me discover what makes it so unique so that I could better plan my visit. However, in my reading, I felt like I was an outsider who didn't quite get it yet. I wanted access to that beauty, but having never experienced it before, it felt just out of reach. If I'd made it farther into the book, perhaps it would have broadened out into a true memoir, but after making 3 attempts on this book, I accepted that it just wasn't for me.
Beautiful writing, beautiful book, but better if you're already enamored with the subject. Thank you to NetGalley for the free book in exchange for this review.
Unfortunately, I didn't really connect with this book as much as I thought I would, and I ultimately made the decision not to finish it. I've never been to Wales, but am currently planning a trip there. I hoped that this book would help me discover what makes it so unique so that I could better plan my visit. However, in my reading, I felt like I was an outsider who didn't quite get it yet. I wanted access to that beauty, but having never experienced it before, it felt just out of reach. If I'd made it farther into the book, perhaps it would have broadened out into a true memoir, but after making 3 attempts on this book, I accepted that it just wasn't for me.
Beautiful writing, beautiful book, but better if you're already enamored with the subject. Thank you to NetGalley for the free book in exchange for this review.
June 15, 2024
Beautifully written creative nonfiction and more than just a memoir, The Long Field offers readers reflections on history, culture, and the essence of being. Though this sounds like a tall order, Petro pulls off this combination swimmingly, starting with her travels and time in Wales; adding in tidbits about King Arthur, stone megalith monuments, and even the invention of the equals sign; and tying the entire journey together with the untranslatable Welsh word hiraeth -- an awareness of absence, and a longing for that which is gone.
Though I knew nothing about Wales, Welsh, or hiraeth before picking up this book, I felt welcomed by the manner in which Petro introduces all three, and was impressed by her ability to craft such immersive essays with no easy answers or obvious setups, all of which challenge the reader to see beyond their parts and form connections about what it means to make one's way in the world and interact with memories. The photographs and artwork, too, are an excellent touch, and I've added Wales to my list of places to one day visit.
Though I knew nothing about Wales, Welsh, or hiraeth before picking up this book, I felt welcomed by the manner in which Petro introduces all three, and was impressed by her ability to craft such immersive essays with no easy answers or obvious setups, all of which challenge the reader to see beyond their parts and form connections about what it means to make one's way in the world and interact with memories. The photographs and artwork, too, are an excellent touch, and I've added Wales to my list of places to one day visit.
September 27, 2021
Family and friends have asked me what The Long Field is about. I think my answer has raised more questions that it has addressed. The Long Field is called a memoir, but it is the story of a place as much as a person; the landscape of Wales as much as the interior landscape of its very creative and introspective author. It is about an American from New Jersey feeling she belongs to the Welsh earth. Most of all, it is about hiraeth -- a word that does not have an American equivalent and that I won't spoil by trying to explain (read The Long Field if you want to know what it means!). The Long Field shape shifts so it is hard to pin down. That is the beauty of it. To read The Long Field is to explore the wondrous mind of Pamela Petro. Her lyrical prose provides a window to another life, another land, and another way of viewing the world.
September 29, 2021
A beautifully written memoir, and so much more. Through her vivid descriptions of the landscape of Wales, its history and language as well as the people she meets along the way and her connection with family, Petro's openness of sharing her experiences made me feel as though I was alongside her on her journey. I imagined being there as she spotted “a field of curious cows” and imagined hearing the “riggings clanking on sailboats” as she did. A book that makes you think and then reflect on the courage it sometimes takes to live each day and be fully present on your search to find that place and space that feels right and just where you belong.
March 13, 2024
I savoured this book bit by bit for more than a year. I stopped many times to re-read (or highlight) words that took my breath away or tickled my ESL teacher brain. When I finally finished the book, I held it reverently in my hands, looked at it front and back and took time to process it. I've never read such masterful, magical writing. I am a little biased by my deep love of Wales, but words are a passion of mine and Pamela's writing is unlike any I've ever read. Even on the last couple of pages "taking photos with borrowed light". Wow. Bravo.
February 8, 2021
As a lover of nature, and someone who thinks deeply about lived experience and the science of time and memory -- I was completely absorbed in this book. The author slides seamlessly through her stories, back and forth through time, looking to define a (be)longing. From wrenching trauma to quiet observation, Petro ties together personal images with detail and delicacy, and creates a universal story about place, time, love and desire. I look forward to reading it again!
December 19, 2024
Most boring and terribly uneducated. "Stream of consciousness"-like lose associative list of random autobiographic events. Lengthy musings about Welsh landscapes and history without actually checking any linguistic or historical facts. The author tries to portray herself as expert on Wales which she clearly isn't. Maybe she thinks Americans are exempt from fact checking? Don't waste your time.
August 7, 2021
There is much that resonated within this memoir. The sense of finding affinity in unexpected foreign lands, the idea that home can sometimes be a place, but it can also be a person. Beautiful interweaving of words, wisdom and observation of the natural world, of Welsh landscapes, history and culture, and a constant inner voice trying to work out what it all means. A great read.
November 4, 2025
A thoughtful and fascinating book. Though quite dense with ideas such as hiraeth, cunefin and hwyl it is never less than engaging and covers many topics in its exploration of the long field, that gap between where we are and where we want to be. All the longing or to use the better term hiraeth.
April 17, 2023
Utterly astounding - I honestly didn't want to finish this and now I'm going to have to tell everyone I know to read it so I can discuss it with them. A must-read!
January 9, 2024
Really thoughtfully and beautifully written. Bit too long, needed a trim! Oozes gorgeous Welshness.
May 7, 2025
A pleasant memoir that perfectly paints the Welsh landscape, mixing it in history and emotion. Now I want to visit Wales.
December 24, 2025
I cannot recommend this book enough. If you’re looking for something to think with, to stew in, to dog-ear and scribble in the margins of, this might br your speed.
May 21, 2022
Hiraeth is a unique Welsh word which the English may translate to ‘homesickness’ however it is more than that. You may not even know you long for a place until you arrive and experience hiraeth. It feels more like home to you than what you’ve ever known. This for Pamela Petro was Wales. Having heard her interviewed on CBC radio and planning a a trip to Wales, it interested me. Now that I’ve read this beautifully written memoir (it took her 8 years to write it) I feel like I may know Wales a bit before I arrive, however I know so much more. About how Welsh words may be pronounced, the movie ‘How Green is My Valley’, about what it may be like to experience a train crash, about relationships and history.
Why The Long Field? ‘When the word ‘home’ and the feeling of being ‘at home’ don’t align, a long field grows up as well in the space between them. A field filled with yearning and daydreams’ (pg 60)
Why The Long Field? ‘When the word ‘home’ and the feeling of being ‘at home’ don’t align, a long field grows up as well in the space between them. A field filled with yearning and daydreams’ (pg 60)
August 17, 2023
Go get yourself a copy of this book right now. Pam is a prolific writer and storyteller, and this is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. She weaves the story of her life into the history of Wales, finding connections in the present day to legends from long ago. And of course her personal history in Wales shows just how entwined person and place can be. In Pam’s case, the two are inseparable. I love the way she described time, as if it folds on top of itself— it made me think about how time and experience and relationships aren’t linear, everything is happening all the time and perhaps we are just viewing it all through a singular, distorted sense. It’s something us humans can’t quite describe, though Pam comes pretty close. In one section she describes time as a thing that “recycles, repeats, is destroyed and renewed. Experience is round like the earth itself.” Pam describes a deep intimacy with time and place. Pam also describes Wales as being labeled as “other” throughout history, its people were called outsiders, they were the underdogs, they were different. Pam shares her own stories of being an outsider too, of being on the precipice of something. Her narrative illustrates the many ways that “hiraeth” has manifested in her life through the lenses of language, age, technology, creativity, queer love, and much more… in ways that are universal and extremely personal. I particularly appreciated the queer love story that is woven throughout all the chapters, as a queer person myself it was inspiring and emotional, and so vivid. An important story to put out into the world. I wanted to underline every sentence in the book. They all just HIT. In my head I kept screaming YES!!!!!!! Pam not only includes rich content, but she writes beautifully. Her words are rhythmic, thoughtful, and unexpected. They flow like the rolling hills in Wales, or the sound of the Welsh language itself. As a writer I was learning so much from her, observing the rich way she activated all the senses and linked all her words and phrases together in a poetic rhythm. Pam’s story is one about becoming in touch with the world on every level, from visceral geological touch to loving the people she is surrounded with and forming communities. Pam takes us on her journey to understand of the meaning of her life and how it relates to everything and everyone around her — as they are, as they were, and how they will be. Such a rich, beautiful read that is contemplative, inspiring, warm and so so fulfilling. There’s no way to do it justice in a review, but this book is absolutely 5/5 stars and you should go read it now!!
Here are a few quotes I pulled that I enjoyed (sorry I forgot to write down the page numbers):
“I found out pretty quickly I liked rain. The way it left my skin feeling intelligent and awake”
“The song—the flavor, the smell—of stones”
“Ahead of me the Beacons’ bald flanks were furrowed like elephant skin in clouded, ashes-of-roses light”
“‘Scarred her, it did,’ he said without anger, as if this were a story he’d known so long that all the rage had bled out of it.”
Here are a few quotes I pulled that I enjoyed (sorry I forgot to write down the page numbers):
“I found out pretty quickly I liked rain. The way it left my skin feeling intelligent and awake”
“The song—the flavor, the smell—of stones”
“Ahead of me the Beacons’ bald flanks were furrowed like elephant skin in clouded, ashes-of-roses light”
“‘Scarred her, it did,’ he said without anger, as if this were a story he’d known so long that all the rage had bled out of it.”
September 3, 2024
The author's passion and deeply entrenched love for Wales and the culture - but mostly the language - is clear as a bell throughout this read.
My family tree has sprinkles from this country, but our family doesn't have any memories except a favorite pasties recipe and an imposition on all children in the family to ensure that How Green is My Valley has been read by the time they leave home (they are told 'it is said that we came from those miners!'). So, my interest in those few things led to my reading this book.
The narrative is rather story telling by free association as many memoirs are - wide ranging and switches in time, place and the author's mindset at any given one of those - that may try the patience of a reader who expects a certain kind of order. That is not me. I'll wander where you wander. . .as I did with this book.
My interest in all things Welsh has been piqued (which I believe is one of the great persuasions of the book), and I am on the hunt for more opportunities to read the works of Pamela Petro. . . .
*A sincere thank you to Pamela Petro, Skyhorse Publishing, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*
My family tree has sprinkles from this country, but our family doesn't have any memories except a favorite pasties recipe and an imposition on all children in the family to ensure that How Green is My Valley has been read by the time they leave home (they are told 'it is said that we came from those miners!'). So, my interest in those few things led to my reading this book.
The narrative is rather story telling by free association as many memoirs are - wide ranging and switches in time, place and the author's mindset at any given one of those - that may try the patience of a reader who expects a certain kind of order. That is not me. I'll wander where you wander. . .as I did with this book.
My interest in all things Welsh has been piqued (which I believe is one of the great persuasions of the book), and I am on the hunt for more opportunities to read the works of Pamela Petro. . . .
*A sincere thank you to Pamela Petro, Skyhorse Publishing, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.*
March 30, 2025
I mostly enjoyed this ambitious, sprawling memoir that combines history, anthropology and philosophy into a heady, contemplative brew.
Petro's exploration of the Welsh concepts of Hiraeth, Cynefin and Hywl was interesting - and combined with her vulnerable recounting of her life story and meticulous research on Welsh history and art/philosophy, the book gave me a lot to sink my teeth into. The experience of being a white American seeking some sense of belonging in the historically and mythologically verdant fields of Wales (or Ireland, Scotland, etc) was relatable, and Petro's account maintains a decent cognizance of the post-colonial perils inherent in this.
I labored to finish this book, as it felt like it could have been 1/2 to 2/3 the length it ended up at. It's certainly a long field, through which Petro meanders with varying degrees of meaningfulness. Ultimately, I'm glad to have wandered through it with her - I'll be ruminating on these three powerful concepts for quite some time.
Petro's exploration of the Welsh concepts of Hiraeth, Cynefin and Hywl was interesting - and combined with her vulnerable recounting of her life story and meticulous research on Welsh history and art/philosophy, the book gave me a lot to sink my teeth into. The experience of being a white American seeking some sense of belonging in the historically and mythologically verdant fields of Wales (or Ireland, Scotland, etc) was relatable, and Petro's account maintains a decent cognizance of the post-colonial perils inherent in this.
I labored to finish this book, as it felt like it could have been 1/2 to 2/3 the length it ended up at. It's certainly a long field, through which Petro meanders with varying degrees of meaningfulness. Ultimately, I'm glad to have wandered through it with her - I'll be ruminating on these three powerful concepts for quite some time.
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