Review
Flight Behavior allows readers to go inside the southern Appalachian landscape that Barbara Kingsolver has held in a literary embrace over the last few years with works like
Prodigal Summer and
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This time, it's to go into the coarse world of Feathertown, Tennessee, home of Dellarobia, a farmer's wife and young mother. Dellarobia's small world is disrupted when millions of monarch butterflies unexplainably migrate to the region, choosing Dellarobia's family farm as their resting place. The novel that results from this fictional event is an engaging read for armchair biologists, naturalists, and readers who are concerned about climate change.
While Kingsolver's novels have always contained political, environmental and social messages, these messages are rendered with a particularly strong hand in
Flight...
Beyond the Book
The misguided migration of monarch butterflies to southern Appalachia in
Flight Behavior is a fictional event, but Kingsolver grounds her theoretical occurrence in reality. As readers see through the character of Lupe, the Mexican wintering grounds of the monarch butterfly are damaged by drastic flooding and mudslides. This event is, sadly, entirely true.
In February 2010 the town of Angangueo, Mexico was devastated with floods and landslides....
