![]() ![]() ![]() She is stopped in her tracks by an astonishing sight that not only interrupts her dash toward ruin but eventually alters her life: trees transformed by what appear to be flames or manifestations of a bizarre disease. One autumn morning, the restless protagonist, 27-year-old Dellarobbia Turnbow, runs headlong into the forest near her home, on the verge of throwing her life away for an impulsive romantic assignation. From that catastrophe Kingsolver, a biologist by training, extrapolates a series of imaginary but plausible consequences.Ī different kind of “flight behavior” sets the story in motion. In 2010, extreme rainfall in the mountains near Angangueo, Michoacán, Mexico - better known as the gateway to the overwintering site of North America’s major population of Monarch butterflies - resulted in “mudslides and catastrophic flooding” that led to the deaths of numerous people and partial destruction of the butterflies’ habitat. ![]() The circumstance upon which Flight Behavior pivots is an actual event. It is to Barbara Kingsolver’s credit that in Flight Behavior, her eighth novel and 14th book, climate change serves as the precipitating factor in an absorbing story that blends science, religion, media exploitation of newsworthy events and the human effects of an unprecedented natural phenomenon. The subject of global warming rarely makes its appearance in the world of mainstream fiction. ![]()
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