*This book was reviewed and written honestly and voluntarily.

If a book could be a lavender-scented candle burning on a rainy day while I drank a cup of simmering honey vanilla chamomile tea, it would be this book.

Soon I’ll Be From the Soil Someday caught me a bit off guard with the title since it seemed a bit redundant. But I was never prouder to eat my words because what’s inside this book is a super soothing story collection that surpasses its title.

For this review, we’re digging our bare feet into the soil. Keep reading for our honest review and recommendation.

About “Soon I’ll Be From the Soil Someday”

Soon I’ll Be From the Soil Someday is a non-fiction collection of essays that focuses on the author, who is mourning the loss of her grandmother, Dede. Dede’s death becomes the catalyst for the narrator’s personal growth as she mourns. As she goes on a journey to recover from her loss, she also details her struggle to find her roots in the world. 

Through her essays, she expresses the ways nature, the universe, and her own will encourages her to confront the areas of suffering in her life. Ultimately she uses plants as teachers to help her heal and move forward.

Eleanor finds comfort in linking plants and their wisdom to her life experiences and beautifully examines the powerful life lessons we can gain simply by returning to nature. 

Kelly’s Honest Book Review

A lovely relatable collection of sorrows, self-love, and healing. 

While the cover doesn’t quite do justice to its contents, Soon I’ll Be From the Soil Someday speaks to the pain, grief, loss, and sorrow we all tend to feel, whether chronically or intermittently. Eleanor Amicucci relates something as simple as a plant to her own healing journey and uses her understanding of nature to teach others how to heal and let go.

At first, some essays feel very lengthy, but please press on. The end of each essay is as prettily wrapped up as a bee slumbering in a rose. Each chapter’s ending holds a lesson that leaves you feeling wholly refreshed and soothed, just like Eleanor’s lavender oils.

There were some parts of this book where I actually wept at the beauty of her words, how moving they were, and how much they resonated with me, especially when she spoke of her grandmother—the Mother Aloe Plant—and taking care of her. It reminded me of my Nana’s passing and how her very presence kept our family together. It was a sweetness to remember her as a result of these stories. I appreciated how Eleanor shared these what she experienced with such vulnerability.

Overall, this is an empowering collection of stories I would read again and again if only to remind me just how splendid the world is should we choose to feel it around us.

Kelly’s Favorite Quote

There were so many beautiful quotes in this book—some of which happened very early on—so I’m going to add a few of them.

“Over the years, I have learned that the only real control comes from letting go, from relaxing the grip on my own life and understanding that I am not the moon, nor am I even a boat in the ocean of my mind. I am more like a buoy. Bouncing, bobbing, submerging, momentarily sinking, but ultimately always floating onward.”

“There is beauty in saying: everything I love must die, and everything dead has its place.”

“I wanted to punch him in the face when he said this, this cowboy-hat-wearing loud-talking pseudo-spiritual-seeming man telling me I wasn’t trying hard enough, I was waiting around for someone else to fix me. I wanted to punch him in the face because he was right, and it was true, and I knew it in my core.”

The quotes speak to letting go and how hearttwarming and sad that can be. But more importantly, when we let go—whether we let go of material things or physically leave this planet—the world still turns.

Book Cover Rating

With as whimsical and calming as this book reads, the cover of the book doesn’t quite offer the same sentiment. While the butterfly is a nice touch, it seems this cover should encompass something more. More essence of a wanderlust woman and her adventures through life. More plant mother vibes.

The one thing I felt did resonate with the inside of the book was the shade of purple she used. The author notes how purple is her favorite color, so when I see this cover, I immediately think, “perhaps that’s why the cover is purple because she simply loves that color.”

I feel this cover deserves more life and more light, so it fits the stories within as well as the gentle, loving nature of the author.

Overall Rating: C

Other Publishing Information

• Published on April 16, 2022
• Self-Published by Eleanor Amicucci
• ISBN: 0578390809
• Gardening, Love and Loss, Plants & Biological Sciences

About Eleanor Amicucci

Eleanor Amicucci is a lifelong reader and writer and has always found beauty in the written word. After suffering the loss of two family members, she was consumed by grief and sadness. 

Around the same time, she found a job working at a garden center, and fell in love with plants. She was able to heal herself and process her grief by spending time amongst the plants and nature, and decided she needed to catalogue all the lessons she learned, for herself and for others. 

Eleanor combined her passion for writing with her newfound love of nature and wrote a series of essays on plants and loss, from which a book soon flowed. She is currently residing in Italy, writing and learning and planting seeds, figuring out life, root by root and branch by branch. Soon I’ll Be from the Soil Someday is her first book.

Learn more about Eleanor Amicucci on her website.