The hidden histories and present-day pathways of walking and motherhood and freedom: Pathfinding by Kerri Andrews

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September 12, 2024

Elliott & Thompson are delighted to announce the acquisition of Pathfinding: On Walking and Motherhood by writer, walker and academic Kerri Andrews, author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking. A potent combination of history, landscape writing and memoir, Pathfinding brings to light stories of walking, motherhood and freedom that have long been neglected or hidden away.

Publishing Director Sarah Rigby commissioned and acquired World Rights (excluding audio) from Kay Peddle at Colwill & Peddle. Pathfinding will be published in hardback and eBook on 13th March 2025.

In the wake of having her own children, walker and writer Kerri Andrews determines to undertake a series of journeys on foot to explore the complex interconnections that have long existed between motherhood and walking. On the eighteenth-century cliffs of Norway and Sweden we meet Mary Wollstonecraft, striding out as she contemplates the fate awaiting her infant daughter in a misogynistic society. We join Ellen Weeton in the patriarchal nineteenth-century, walking miles upon miles for a slim chance to see the daughter from whom she has been unwillingly and cruelly separated. And we walk alongside Kate Chopin and the heroines of her novels at the start of the twentieth century as they try to step into new, less restrictive, lives.

There have been countless mothers since who have found solace or escape in walking, and some of them join Kerri as she traverses urban, rural and increasingly mountainous landscapes. Together, they explore the complicated ground of motherhood today – post-partum bodies and minds, ambition, rage and hope –  in the pursuit of pleasure and liberation through walking.

Sarah Rigby, Publishing Director at Elliott & Thompson said:

‘Walking brings not only joy and connection but freedom: the freedom to decide when and where to put one foot in front of the other; the freedom to rely solely on ourselves and our bodies. But what happens to this freedom when we become mothers? Kerri Andrews’ Pathfinding is a powerful and much needed invitation to mothers today to reclaim that sense of power, pleasure and liberation for ourselves.’

Kerri Andrews, author of Pathfinding said:

‘It’s an absolute dream to be working with Sarah and the team at Elliott & Thompson, and to have found a home for Pathfinding with them. Sarah’s vision and passion for Pathfinding have been compelling and hugely exciting and I cannot wait to share the book with readers’

ABOUT KERRI ANDREWS

Kerri Andrews is a writer, walker and academic with a PhD in women’s literature. She is the author of Pathfinding: On Walking and MotherhoodWanderers: A History of Women Walking and the editor of Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing About Walking, as well as the first ever collection of Nan Shepherd’s letters. She lives in Scotland with her two young children, but it was in the Yorkshire Dales that she discovered the delights of walking, before falling in love first with the Lake District and then the Scottish mountains. She is a member of Mountaineering Scotland and has so far climbed over 120 of Scotland’s Munros.