About the Book:
When Dr. Artemis Nicche’s world shattered — first as a child who witnessed her brother’s death, then decades later amid the relentless losses of a pandemic — the animals arrived. Not by chance but by design.
Lucy, Artemis’s beloved cat, speaks from beyond, her voice threading through the veil between worlds. Phoebe, the ancient soul in kitten form, teaches stillness in the face of sorrow. Maggie and Jessie, twin hearts beating joy into broken places, remind Phoebe that love is both anchor and release.
This is the animals’ story to tell: How they guide the lost back to themselves. How they carry grief until humans learn to set it down. How they transform those who believe that they are rescuing animals when, all along, the animals are the ones doing the saving.
As Artemis builds a sanctuary for thousands of forgotten creatures, she becomes what she was always meant to be, not a healer of bodies but a guardian of souls who’ve lost their way home.
Raising Artemis is an offering from the animal world, a reminder that the greatest teachers have four paws, that love transcends death, and that your truest purpose often waits in the last place you think to look.
About the Author:
Christine Baker is an award-winning storyteller, speaker, and lifelong animal lover. Her writing explores the quiet magic woven into everyday life — the resilience we discover in loss, and the extraordinary ways animals shape our journeys.
She is the author of Why She Plays: The World of Women’s Basketball (University of Nebraska Press, 2018), a groundbreaking book that gives voice to female athletes and celebrates their passion for the game. Her work has earned recognition including the Wesleyan University Rulewater Prize and Mount Saint Mary College Distinguished Alumni Award, and she has received multiple screenplay honors including Sundance Screenwriters Institute Top 10 Finalist. As a screenwriter, her scripts have garnered festival selections and industry acclaim.
Whether writing about sports, crafting screenplays that bring strong women from history to life, or weaving tales of contemporary fiction with magical elements, Christine is drawn to stories of strength, connection, and the courage to live authentically. Raising Artemis is her most personal work yet, blending her love of nature, her beloved animal companions, and her belief that stories can heal.
Christine lives in Connecticut, where she can be found tending her garden, walking along the shoreline, or sharing her home with animals who always seem to have the last word.
Endorsements:
“This is a story about how animals enhance us, and how the animals we choose to share our lives with become part of us. Animals understand the truly fundamental things about life, the world, and the Universe around us. And if we listen carefully, animals can be our guide.”
– Benjamin Mee, Author of I Bought a Zoo
“Raising Artemis is, at its core, a story about the kind of grief that rearranges an existence — the quiet, brutal, raw grief of the loss of loved animals who were witnesses to a soul throughout the various chapters of life…[] This story honors that wordless communion — that strange, sacred language shared between humans and the beings who don’t need words to understand. Christine has beautifully and creatively written a love letter to the animals who stay, who light our path long after their physical being has left the earth, and who teach us, again and again, how to find our way back to ourselves.”
– Coleen A. Ellis, CT, CPLP, Pet Loss Pioneer, Author & Speaker
“This magical book had me from the start. The voice of Lucy the cat captures all I believe—and more—about our connection with the animals who come into our lives as teachers, soulmates…”
– Elena Mannes, Author of Soul Dog
https://www.christinebakerwriter.com
