The Trees are Speaking Dispatches from the Salmon Forests
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2025
ISBN 9780295753676
Hardback, 248 pp. 40 b & w illustrations including many by the author. $29.95

“a profound and enlightening exploration of the critical connection between old growth forests and salmon habitat, offering a hopeful vision for their recovery and permanency.” 
—Tom DeLuca, dean College of Forestry, Oregon State University

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Orca Shared Waters Shared Home
Braided River/Mountaineers Books Seattle, 2021
ISBN 9781680513264
Hardback, 192 pages, stunning color photography, maps, and scientific illustrations. $34.95
2021 National Outdoor Book Award Winner in Nature and the Environment
2022 Washington State Book Award Winner in General Nonfiction

"splendid book about the orca whale.... Beautifully designed, with a profusion of color photography and historic black and whites, this is a book that informs and leave us with a sense of wonder.
— National Outdoor Book Awards

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Rescuing Rialto a Baby Sea Otter’s Story
Lynda’s first children’s book. Ages 6-9
MacMillan Publishers, Roaring Brook Press, New York, 2019
ISBN 9781250147646
Hardback, 40 pages, many color photographs and maps, $18.99


"Calling all sea otter fans!"
– Kirkus

"The thorough text is peppered with challenging vocabulary and punctuated by full-color photographs of Rialto. Readers who are interested in sea otters will enjoy the multifaceted storytelling in this book."
- School Library Journal

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Witness Tree Seasons of Change with a Century Old Oak
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2019 (first published in hardback by Bloomsbury, New York, 2017)
ISBN 978029746661
Paperback, 240 pages, 10 b & w illustrations, 1 map $19.95

"A meticulously, beautifully layered portrayal of vulnerability and loss, renewal and hope, this extensively researched yet deeply personal book is a timely call to bear witness and to act in an age of climate-change denial."
- Kirkus Reviews starred review

"The intriguing, and more intimate, Witness Tree . . . portrays trees as ‘scribes, diarists, historians.’ They are ‘among our oldest journalists.’ A reporter herself . . . Mapes sets out to tell the story of climate change through one tree. But that is, marvelously, the least of it."
- New York Times Book Review

"For those with an abiding fondness for New England farmsteads and woodlots, Mapes offers up literary comfort food, as welcome as hot cocoa on a chilly day . . . To walk with Mapes through these pages is not only to enjoy the charm of rural New England, but also to experience the global effects of our civilization–for better and for worse–on an intimate scale"
- Natural History Magazine

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Elwha a River Reborn
Mountaineers Books, Seattle, 2013
ISBN: 9781594857348
Paperback, 184 pages, with125 color photographs including rare historic images and a map
$29.95
Winner of the national Nautilus Awards 2014 Better Books for a Better World Silver Award

"..a beautiful book about the realization of the largest dam removal project in North America and the actual restoration of a river’s ecosystem. This story brings hope in a sea of pessimism that something that was long lost can actually be restored."
— Outdoors West

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Breaking Ground the Unearthing of Tse-Whit-zen Village
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2009
ISBN 97802959888788
Paperback, 272 pages, 92 color illustrations

"A wonderful project . . . both because of the author's passion and accessible style and her attention to critical issues of ethics and relationship-building. A significant contribution to the region and to scholarship more broadly."
- Coll Thrush, author of Native Seattle

"Breaking Ground is about the clash of two civilizations, one of which has built right on top of the other. Lynda Mapes has written a sensitive and highly informative work that serves as an elegy for the hundreds of Klallam ancestors who remained unburied until last fall."
- Katie Schneider, Portland Oregonian

"Breaking Ground is, by design, geared for the general reader, but its content is so valuable that it should be considered required reading for all, no matter the focus of one's work."
- The Midden

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