Flight Behavior

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Monarch butterflies amaze the Turnbow family and members of their church when they completely cover the hillside behind their sheep farm. The monarchs’ usual winter resting place in Mexico was flooded, and they migrated to Tennessee where it might get too cold for them to survive, and where Bear Turnbow wants to log the hillside to pay bills. Unhappy Dellarobia, married to Bear’s son Cub, was the first to spot them, and it changes her life, especially when scientists come to study the butterflies. Dellarobia and Cub married young, and have little in common besides their two young children. Kingsolver is really good at dialogue and description, noted in a Christmas shopping trip the couple make to the dollar store and scenes in their mega church. The author is a little preachy on the topic of global warming, but Dellarobia, her son Preston, and the reader become fascinated by the butterflies and really care about their continued survival. This book could only have been written by the author of Prodigal Summer and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Brenda