Scribner will publish the third and latest book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, on November 19.
Kimmerer, a MacArthur-winning botanist and founding director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY ESF, is best known for her second book, the breakout hit Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, published by Milkweed Editions in 2013. Hardly an overnight success, Braiding Sweetgrass landed on the New York Times bestseller list in early 2020—five years after it was released in paperback—and has remained there for 219 weeks and counting. To date, the book has sold more than two million copies.
In 2020, the Minneapolis-based Milkweed saw its sales jump 183% over 2019 thanks to the pandemic-era rediscovery of Braiding Sweetgrass, which was published in paperback in 2015, establishing what Milkweed marketing director Joanna Demkiewicz called a "new sales normal."
Kimmerer's first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was published by Oregon State University Press in 2003.
The Serviceberry, Scribner said, "expands on the wildly popular message of Braiding Sweetgrass: that by incorporating wisdom from Indigenous teachings and the natural world into our daily lives, we can combat not only ecological destruction but also the epidemic of purposelessness and isolation afflicting all of us in our digitally focused, self-interested world."
In the book, the publisher continued, Kimmerer "asserts that in our current economy—in which the scarcity of resources is assumed and often manufactured—individualism and greed are reinforced, to the detriment of both our ecosystem and our personal relationships.... [S]he uses the serviceberry"—a kind of shrub—"as an example of a naturally occurring 'gift economy,' in which species share abundance and cultivate relationships without the explicit expectation of compensation, and argues that we should establish a gift economy of our own."
Scribner added that Kimmerer's advance payments from the book will be "donated for land protection, restoration, and justice in support of healing land and people." The publisher declined to comment on a first print run for the book or marketing plans.
