Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Dellarobia Turnbow is a petite, fiery redhead who got pregnant in high school and married young.  She is 29 and parentless, with two young children, in-laws who don't respect her and a husband who is a constant channel changer.  Dellarobia resides in a small farming community in the southern Appalachian mountains and feels there is more to life than being stuck in her small home in Feathertown, Tennessee.

Her mind and heart begin to wander and as she takes a walk on the wild side to certain marital disaster, a miracle happens.  Dellarobia sees what she thinks is a forest of red fire (she forgot her glasses) but is actually a roosting place for monarch butterflies who are in the mountain by some kind of complex ecological misalignment.  Dellarobia is forever changed by the monarch butterflies, as the outside world invades her home and mountain.  Is it a miracle, or an environmental problem?  Dellarobia searches for her truth and the truth about the world as she knows it.

Flight Behavior is mesmerizing and detailed and oh sooooo good.  The writing is exquisite, a electric mix of words blended together to form sentences that create a visual picture that is stunning.  Kingsolver captures the reader from the first page and holds their attention rapt until the reader flies on to their next book.  For a word lover, like me, Flight Behavior is just plain delectable.

I just have to quote some of the great sentences in Flight Behavior.  "A certain feeling come from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture." Pg. 1. "Her car was parked in the only spot in the county that wouldn't incite gossip, her own driveway." Pg. 3. "The electric pulse of desire buzzed through her body like an alarm clock gone off in early light, setting in motion all the things in a day that can't be stopped." Pg. 3.

Barbara Kingsolver fans will be delighted with her new novel Flight Behavior.  Flight Behavior is everything a Kingsolver novel should be, full of environmental issues, an awareness of cultural differences, a beautiful landscape, creative characters who go through a metamorphosis and a moral dilemma.  This is the fifth book I have read of Kingsolver's and I am reminded that I need to get busy and read the rest of them because she is such an amazing writer.