Reese Witherspoon's High School English Teacher Wrote Her Latest Book Club Pick

"You taught me so much.”

Reese Witherspoon’s latest book club pick is special for a number of reasons. Not only is it Reese's Book Club's 100th book, but it was written by someone near and dear to the actress’ heart: her high school English teacher.

Witherspoon announced that September's book is The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl ​​in a video posted to YouTube on Tuesday. In it, The Morning Show star visited Renkl at her old high school in Nashville, Tennessee, to share the good news.

Sitting in Harpeth Hall School’s library, Witherspoon told Renkl that the idea to choose her latest novel "hit me like a lightning bolt."

"This is gonna make me cry," she continued. "You taught me so much. You saw something in me and encouraged me."

The two of them went on to talk about what the future Oscar winner was like in high school, and how she used books to escape when life was difficult.

"You were working in an adult world but you were still a kid," Renkl told an emotional Witherspoon. "And you were still navigating ... the cliques and the casual cruelty of high school."

Renkl is not your ordinary retired high school English teacher. After leaving teaching in 1997, the Alabama native became a freelance writer for various national publications and eventually became a columnist for The New York Times. Renkl’s first book, Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss, was published in 2019 to rave reviews.

Witherspoon offered a synopsis of her latest book on Instagram.

“The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year is a beautiful love letter to nature and the world around us,” she wrote. “Divided into fifty-two chapters, it follows the creatures and plants in Margaret’s backyard over the course of a year, capturing both the joy of nature’s ongoing pleasures and the grief of fleeting moments.”

"It's a beautiful love letter to nature and the world around us," Witherspoon said in the video. “And I think this could not be more timely.”

“Welcome to the club!” she concluded.

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