Tapper’s groundbreaking first book  How to Love a Forest  offered a pragmatic and hopeful vision for our relationship with forests and other ecosystems. His new book,  The Forest Year , lives inside the practice of staying, caretaking, and paying attention. Following the author’s forest through a year of life, the book explores flowers, birds, forest ecology, biodiversity, while also reflecting on stewardship, community, and what it means to be rooted in place.  The Forest Year  is a meditative and lyrical ode to the land, weaving complex scientific and ecological concepts with beautiful narrative prose, making nuanced ideas easy to understand and deeply resonant. Both place-based and practice-driven, Tapper writes not as an armchair philosopher or an academic, but as a working forester and ecologist stewarding real forests in real time, blending emotional insight with ecological rigor. A moving account of what it means to persist in the face of change and to love a place through work, compromise, sacrifice, and humility, this book will inspire readers to think deeply about where they live and who they are.