Ecological Fiction--Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behavior"

Barbara Kingsolver's lyrical writing is always a pleasure to read. In Flight Behavior she uses her lovely prose to address climate change head-on. A scientist herself, Kingsolver has a strong message for the reader, and she delivers it sharply.

The author sets this story in the Tennessee mountains of Appalachia, where millions of confused monarch butterflies have converged, struggling to overwinter way too far north. It is a species in desperate search for survival and it may not succeed. The butterflies’ normal winter home in the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico has been destroyed by flood. The milkweed plant, so important to their survival of their offspring, has burned up in the extreme heat of the plains. There are plenty of biblical references and apocalyptic metaphors throughout this book. We are, after all, in the Bible Belt of the South.

Dellarobia Turnbow, the main character of this novel, is a rural Tennessee woman. Now 28-years-old, she lives with her husband and two children on a sheep farm owned by her in-laws. She loves her children and feels affection for her husband, but Dellarobia is itching for change. She should have headed off to college after high school, but now feels trapped by the hurried-up marriage that was the result of a teenage pregnancy more than ten years ago.

Dellarobia is the first to discover the butterflies on her in-laws' land. When news of the monarch phenomenon spreads, nature-lovers, environmental activists, the press, and scientists descend on the Turnbow's rural Tennessee community, each group representing a different point-of-view in the climate change debate. The doubters are largely the local residents, but Dellarobia does not comfortably align with them. The influx of the outside world intrigues her. She is smitten by the charming, handsome head scientist who has devoted his entire career to the monarchs, and she is smart enough to understand the environmental calamity that she might be witnessing. Forces of nature (or God's will) have probably changed the lives of the monarchs forever; perhaps they will change Dellarobia's life as well.  

Flight Behavior could be a great choice for book discussion groups.