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Published Sep 2008
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
At 34 years of age, Scarlet has come home for the passing of her famous mother, the bird artist Addie Kavanaugh. The year is 2002. Though Addie and her husband, the world-renowned ornithologist Tom Kavanaugh, have made their life in southeastern Pennsylvania, Addie has chosen to die at the home of her dearest friend, Cora. This is because their ramshackle cottage in Burnham, Pennsylvania, is filled with so much history and because, in the last ten years or so, even birdsong has seemed to make Addie angry, or sad, or both. These are the things that Scarlet needs to understand.
Cora and Lou (the third woman in Addie's circle) will help Scarlet to see her mother in full. In addition, Scarlet carries her own secret into these foggy days - a secret for Addie, one that involves Cora, too.
Joyce Hinnefeld's debut novel is rich in so many ways beyond the taut mother-daughter dynamic and the competition among even the closest of women. The natural world, an artist's vision, the intensity of long-lasting love, the flight of a bird's song and the sighting of an extinct - or perhaps illusory - samll creature all work to shape the plot of the novel. Even the prose seems filled with birdsong - at once raucous and transporting. In its structure and style, In Hovering Flight follows in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf, Harriet Doerr and Carol Shields: musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld's own.
"Hinnefeld's drama soars, especially in its depiction of Addie's complicated relationship with Scarlet, who's also trying to find her 'wings.'" - Publishers Weekly.
"Starred Review. Particularly notable for its engrossing details about bird life, this moving book is strongly recommended for all fiction collections." - Library Journal.
"[A] gifted and wise storyteller who - through many layers - reveals the core of each character. In Hovering Flight is a compelling and mysterious novel." —Ursula Hegi.
"In Hovering Flight was an enchanting read on numerous levels. The true birdwatcher/scholar/artist lives of the main characters taught and touched me. Expanding that theme into passion for and pain about nature and ecology worked beautifully. Add to that a variety of complex, realistic relationships and the result has stayed with me long after finishing the book. What a spectacular debut." - Dana Brigham, Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA.
This information about In Hovering Flight was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Joyce Hinnefeld is an Associate Professor of Writing at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pa. She is the author of a short story collection, Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (University Press of New England, 1998), which was awarded the 1997 Breadloaf Writer's Conference Bakeless Prize in fiction in 1997. In Hovering Flight is her first novel.
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