Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

 

Hope Jahren's love for the trees and plants she studies is evident in this memoir of her life. Loving descriptions of how trees live, grow, endure, and propagate are intertwined with Hope's memories of growing up in wintry Minnesota, leaving to attend college in California, and making stops in Georgia, Hawaii, and Norway along the way. Hope includes introspection about her very different relationships with her mother and father. Hope's deep and unconventional friendship with fellow scientist and eventual lab partner, Bill, is central to her life story. That loyal friendship carried her through some very trying times, including the challenges of poverty, an initially undiagnosed mental illness, and the struggle to be funded as a research scientist, especially a woman research scientist, in the field of geobiology.

It's an honest, deeply-moving book about not fitting in, but not giving up in the struggle to find balance and create the space where you belong. Hope Jahren's book about climate change came out in March 2020 – The Story of More. I can't wait to check it out.