From the author of the acclaimed Insectopedia comes a powerful exploration of history, loss, and the absences that permeate the present.When Hugh Raffles's two sisters died suddenly within a few weeks of each other, he reached for rocks, stones, and other seemingly solid objects as anchors in a world unmoored, ways to make sense of these events through stories far larger than his own.Drawing on history, anthropology, geology, and ten years of field research, this moving and p