Penelope: A Love Story by Bochner, Paul

The extraordinary true story of an injured, abandoned fawn and the man who nurses her back to health, transforming his understanding of love and erasing the barrier between humans and animals.

"This is a book drenched in tenderness and suffused with wonder. . . . Penelope is a revelation."--Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus

On a late winter evening, author Paul Bochner looked out the window of his home. A solitary fawn stood in near darkness, famished, disabled, and clearly in pain. Hobbled with a broken foot, abandoned by her mother and left to die, she had miraculously endured an exceptionally brutal winter alone in the woods.

Perhaps it was an imperative toward survival which led Penelope to his door. From that night, remaining wild and free, she returned to him daily. Each time she appeared, Bochner greeted her gently, offering food, empathy, and care, allowing her to guide the progress of their relationship. As he earned Penelope's trust and observed the full range of her emotions, it became evident that their inner lives were more alike than might have seemed possible.

In words and photographs, Paul Bochner shares an uncommon connection of the heart, mind and spirit with a wild animal, and with it his growing respect for her and for all creatures.

Woven with the joy and pain of living, Penelope is the most unlikely of love stories, and one of the most memorable.

Author: Paul Bochner
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group (NY)
Published: 10/13/2026
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.09lbs
ISBN: 9798217399413

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/17/2026

About the Author
Paul Bochner began his professional life early, as a working musician through his mid-teens in Los Angeles, then, at age 17, moving to Montreal at the invitation of the National Film Board of Canada. He has won several international awards for his films and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Outside the door of his home in New York's Hudson Valley, which he shares with his wife, Connie, is a stone with the carved words; "Our home is a safe haven that nurtures all living creatures, an eternal resting place away from harm."