If you have read Barbara Kingsolver before, then you know she is a beautiful writer of descriptive prose, as well as the inner life of her characters. Nature figures largely in her novels, as in Lacuna which won the Orange Prize, or humanitarian disasters as in The Poisonwood Bible.
In Flight Behavior we meet a character with the delightful name of Dellarobia Turnbow. She and her family live in southern Appalachia in the small town of Featherstone, where life in this rural community centers around farming and church gatherings. The Turnbows own a sheep farm on which they are barely eking out a living. Kingsolver paints vivid word pictures of the difficult life of a sheep farmer through the sheering, sorting wool and the birthing of lambs. Dellarobia's days are filled with farm duties, cooking, knitting, raising her children and dealing with cranky in laws and a lunky husband who is devoid of imagination. She was 17 and pregnant when she married Cub Turnbow and began a life that was completely different than one she had imagined. Dellarobia is the heart and soul of her family. She is also intelligent and curious, traits that have been passed down to her young son who, like Dellarobia has a fierce interest in the nature which is part of their everyday life.
The story opens with Dellarobia climbing the mountain behind the farm for an illicit rendezvous. Her heart wasn't really in this meeting, and when it doesn't pan out we feel relief along with her. Instead, she sees an amazing, and for her a life changing, sight. Clustered in the trees as far as the eye can see are thousands and thousands of Monarch butterflies which the locals call Orange Billys, an old term named for the English King, William, and the Orangemen of Protestant Ulster. Somehow the butterflies have lost their home in Mexico to mudslides and floods where they had migrated for eons. Now they have alighted on the mountains and hills of the Turnbow land. Kingsolver shows us the different attitudes and reactions in this small and unsophisticated community. Some think Dellarobia was sent this gift from God, some think the family should make money by encouraging busloads of tourists. A clueless female reporter hypes the feel-good story while ignoring the environmental disaster that it really is.
Dellarobia's life is changed forever when a scientist, Ovid Byron, who has devoted his life to the study of Monarchs, comes to town with his associates and students to study climate change and its effects on these unfortunate and beautiful insects. Dellarobia's interest is peaked, and suddenly her life is no longer full of a dull routine as she discovers the magic of scientific study. At the same time she is moving in a direction away from her husband and toward a future she had only dreamed about. Still, nature is not finished with this family or the butterflies, who are fighting to survive a winter colder than any they had lived through in Mexico. It is a season of punishing rains with disastrous results for the family and the town.
Kingsolver is wonderful in her descriptions of farm life, small town life, and the nature of her characters. The book is filled with people who have lived through tough times, but continue meeting life head on. It is not unusual these days, to see the havoc wreaked by natural calamities, almost on a daily basis. We can feel for these sturdy and plain speaking people, and hope only for the best for them. Kingsolver is a gifted writer who has appeal for all interested in good writing coupled with intelligent information of the natural world and environment. The book does not disappoint and is a good choice for a reading group and a follow-up discussion.
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