Twelve Moons

TWELVE MOONS follows a year spent caught between the wild sea and the changing moon of the wide Northumberland skies. Caro Giles lives on the far edge of the country, with her tribe of daughters: The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One. She is at once alone and yet surrounded. Bound by circumstance, financial constraints, illness and the challenges of single motherhood, she has nowhere to go but the fierce landscape that surrounds her. Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones – and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides. TWELVE MOONS follows the lunar calendar, each chapter sharing a month and a moon, and shows the simmering power that lies in our often hidden daily lives. A dazzlingly honest memoir that while never turning away from the awkward truths of life, also shows how love will flourish if we can only find a space for ourselves. Set against windswept beaches and ancient hills, this is a story steeped in nature and landscape. Since our earliest days, mankind has looked up at the moon and seen a story reflected back. Twelve Moons is one of those stories – a book about finding yourself, your voice and a sense that even in the dark of the night, we are never truly alone.

‘If Little Women had been written from the perspective of Marmee March – and Marmee was undergoing a divorce in the 21st-century Northumberland countryside – then it might read a lot like Caro Giles’ Twelve Moons…A reminder of motherhood’s tyrannous altruism, and of how nature’s changing contrasts – the moon, sea and seasons – can re-root us even during the hardest emotional storms.’New Statesman ‘A work of such determined beauty and generosity: the story of a mother making art and meaning in a difficult year and a remote location. Moonlit, full of strong tidal feeling, and deeply moving’ Tanya Shadrick ‘An incredibly poetic memoir…a woman finding her way back to herself’ Marianne Levy ‘A beautiful, absorbing story of what happens when a family doesn’t fit the mould and how solace can be found in the elements’ Amy Liptrot ‘A gorgeous, touching telling of a year of wild mothering – at the edge of place and time – but written straight from the very heart of its author’Kerri ní Dochartaigh ‘In this raw, fiercely honest memoir Caro Giles illuminates the madness, magic and mess of motherhood. It is a love letter to the wilds of Northumberland, a song to the pull of the sea and a heartful exploration of what it means to be broken and to fight to piece yourself back together’ Lulah Ellender ‘A hypnotic memoir of motherhood…Twelve Moons is an exploration of the annihilation and reclaiming of self that so many readers will recognise and return to. Caro Giles' writing exerts a gravitational pull, and her story of entanglement and enchantment, loneliness and love is a gift for these times’ Rebecca Schiller ‘There is power in her description of the relentlessness of life as a single parent, and in her evocation of the devastation that her divorce caused. You’ll finish the book full of admiration for Giles’s devotion to her girls, and hoping that she finds the identity she’s searching for’ Mail on Sunday

Caro Giles is a writer based in Northumberland. Her words are inspired by her local landscape, the wide empty beaches and the Cheviot Hills. She writes honestly about what it means to be a woman, a mother and a carer and about the value in taking the road less travelled. Her writing has appeared in journals, press and periodicals and she was named Countryfile magazine’s New Nature Writer of the Year in 2021.