Every Living Thing

James Herriot’s final work and last in his beloved series of animal stories This fifth and final of James Herriot's heartwarming story collections brings back familiar friends (including old favorites such as Tricki Woo) and introduces new ones, including Herriot’s children Rosie and Jimmy and the marvelously eccentric vet Calum Buchanan. As James grows older, he finds that change comes even to his beloved Yorkshire---but not necessarily bad, as he watches his own two...
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James Herriot’s final work and last in his beloved series of animal stories This fifth and final of James Herriot's heartwarming story collections brings back familiar friends (including old favorites such as Tricki Woo) and introduces new ones, including Herriot’s children Rosie and Jimmy and the marvelously eccentric vet Calum Buchanan. As James grows older, he finds that change comes even to his beloved Yorkshire---but not necessarily bad, as he watches his own two children come to share and participate in his deep love of the animal world. Herriot’s last memoir,Every Living Thingis a truly heartwarming read, burstingly full of his deep joy in life, sense of humor, and appreciation of the world around him. James Herriotlived in Yorkshire, England with his wife and family, where his son has now taken over his veterinary practice. He is the author of the classic international bestsellersAll Things Bright and Beautiful, All Things Wise and Wonderful,andThe Lord God Made Them All.He is also the author of numerous collections of short stories and a series of illustrated books for children. Dr. Herriot died in February 1995. This fifth and final of James Herriot’s heartwarming story collections brings back familiar friends (including old favorites such as Tricki Woo) and introduces new ones, including Herriot’s children Rosie and Jimmy and the marvelously eccentric vet Calum Buchanan. As James grows older, he finds that change comes even to his beloved Yorkshire—unexpected, perhaps, but not unwelcome, as he watches his own two children come to share and participate in his deep love of the animal world. Herriot’s last memoir,Every Living Thingis a truly heartwarming read, breathtakingly full of his deep joy in life, sense of humor, and appreciation of the world around him. "Like its predecessors, this graceful collection of essays about the hardy dalesmen and women of Yorkshire and their animals is like a cup of hot sugared tea by the fire. Funny and poignant, it’s the work of a mature memoirist who has learned to polish his reminiscences to a mellow gleam."—Chicago Sun-Times   "Smashingly good sequel to the beloved veterinarian's earlier memoirs, and well worth the ten-year wait sinceThe Lord God Made Them All. Although no exact dates are given, Herriot seems to pick up just where he left off, in the 1960's in rural Yorkshire, when veterinary medicine was still a barehanded, rough-and-tumble affair, with farm animals the main patients and infection a constant threat. (Herriot seems to spend half his time slipping on cow turds or with his arm up a cow's vagina, helping a birthing calf see the light of day.) The author's superbly gifted partner, Siegfried, is back, as is Herriot's loving wife, Helen. But the practice has expanded and much of the good feeling here involves two assistants: John Crooks, who goes on to become a world-class vet, and Calum Buchanan, eccentric supreme, who eats ducks with feathers attached and collects a menagerie of badgers, foxes, monkeys, and rabbits before setting out for Papua New Guinea. Herriot buys a house; dresses like a buffoon to save a client's farm; comes down with a dreadful cow disease; tends to our old friend Tricky Woo, Mrs. Pumphrey's spoiled Pekingese; and, in general, sheds his benign presence on a zooful of animals and a zooful of human beings. The milieu is deliciously familiar—"a dirty, dangerous job" made glorious by "the whole rich life." So is the moral—that love of animals is synonymous with love of human beings, and that there can never be too much of either. Crafted with foxy intelligence and angelic compassion: proof that for a 'vitnery' in the Yorkshire dales, life is bli