Flight Behavior: A Novel

Near her hardscrabble sheep farm in Tennessee, Dellarobia Turnbow discovers millions of monarch butterflies who have deviated from their normal migration pattern to Mexico. The discovery brings the world to her doorstep, the tourists, the eco-activists, and the media among them. Also to arrive is Ovid Byron, a lepidopterist who hires Dellarobia to help research why the butterflies have arrived in Appalachia.

The answer soon becomes clear: climate change as a result of global warming. The butterflies’ Mexican home has been destroyed by flooding exacerbated by deforestation. Initially, Dellarobia is not a believer in climate change; gradually, however, she changes her mind as evidence is presented to her. Unfortunately others in the show more community are not so open-minded; her father-in-law, for example, wants to log the mountain which the butterflies have chosen for their winter home. The blindness of climate change deniers is addressed strongly by Ovid: “’What scientists disagree on now . . . is how to express our shock. The glaciers that keep Asia’s watersheds in business are going right away. . . . The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls . . . in a canoe. . . . We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?’’’ (367)

The serious social message is expertly intertwined with a personal story. Dellarobia is unhappy and frustrated with her life. She feels trapped in her marriage to Cub, a dim-witted, unimaginative, passive man overshadowed by his parents. Though he is decent, good-hearted, and well-meaning, he cannot provide her with an escape from their economically and intellectually impoverished life. Working for Ovid serves as an awakening for Dellarobia. She gains self-confidence as her horizons expand and decides to seek personal fulfillment, searching, like the butterflies, for the place where she belongs. Obviously she metamorphoses from caterpillar to butterfly, although at the end she, again like the butterflies, is faced with an uncertain future.

There are many Biblical allusions in the novel. Dellarobia sees a flaming forest, like Moses saw a burning bush. References to Noah’s flood appear more than once. I foresee students of English literature writing essays analyzing Kingsolver’s use of Biblical allusions to add depth to her novel.

This is literary fiction at its best; it combines an interesting plot and a dynamic protagonist with an urgent message: the world is a “mess made by undisciplined humans” (25) who must stop behaving like “ignorant little dumb-heads” (41) or “the world [will] fall down around them” (25). show less

Kingsolver takes on global warming by examining one specific impact in one specific place: monarch butterfly migration at the Turnbow farm in Feathertown, Tennessee. As always, her characters have depth and realism—there are few outright villains here.

One of the things I loved best about this book was the occasions when Dellarobia sticks up for the locals, decrying a late-night talk show that makes fun of an Appalachian man simply for his appearance and accent, clarifying the local perspective on global warming, or silently judging the out-of-towners for their obtuse classism.

Bound together by harsh truths related to poverty, disappointment, and climate change, Kingsolver's Flight Behavior moves forward with her signature lyric prose, weaving worlds that are both foreign and familiar. As always, her characters are not just believable, but engaging and, if anything, too realistic and familiar for comfort. In this novel in particular, the children and the odd mix of central characters are the heart of the work, illustrating the heartbreaking disconnect between devoted naturalists and a community which is necessarily held outside of that world by economic concerns and personal crises of their own.

Even though it took some time for me to engage with Kingsolver's narrator here, I ended up not being able to put the show more book down once I'd moved through maybe a quarter of the novel, and the compelling story that evolves in the work held me in until the end. My only complaint, in the end, is with the ending. The wrap-up felt not only rushed, but unbelievable on some levels of plotting and character, and after such a wonderful tale, I really expected more. Despite the ending, though, the book was well worth reading and passing on.

Overall, recommended. The ending is the only thing that will hold this off from remaining a favorite of mine. show less

I first discovered Barbara Kingsolver when my sister moved to Arizona—Kingsolver's early books are set in Tucson—I read them many, many years ago. Of course that was long before I understood that Tucson and Phoenix are completely different worlds. I've popped in to read other Kingsolver novels over the years, like The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, probably long before I was old enough to really appreciate them but I've moved my copies from rented room to apartment to house for years. But when I read Demon Copperhead last year I knew I wanted to revisit those early books and read what I missed. Last year I had a brief obsession with butterflies and I couldn't get butterfly-related books out of my head so I made a collage show more including Flight Behavior, bought a copy at Bookman's, then proceeded to forget I had it. When I saw a Monarch land on the milkweed in my yard, I remembered all over again.

This is a slow burn of a book that opens with a woman ready to blow up her life until she sees something that opens her eyes to the bigger world around her. In the woods above her house, Dellarobia finds millions of butterflies (her mother-in-law calls them King Billies). When her father-in-law announces a logging company is going to clear cut, she tells her family to go see those woods before making a decision and they see the same miracle that changed her direction. From there, we learn more about why the Monarchs are gathering along with Dellarobia. We meet a scientist who lives in an RV and sets up a lab in their barn. Two different worlds set up in rural Appalachia—a scientist who knows that these butterflies should not be there and the people that live there seeing a miracle. Dellarobia straddles both as she learns more about the reality of climate change and the harsh reality that this is an ecological crisis, the world crying out, not a miracle to bring tourism to the area.

I felt for Dellarobia, her depression mirrored my own experiences in many ways—I also hate everyone and everything when the depresh hits hard. The conversations between Dellarobia and Ovid, the ecologist, were my favorite parts. I kept going back to double check the copyright date because, what do you mean? We've been living in this divisive, divided world for well over a decade? Those conversations felt like they could happen today—they reminded me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Since I started learning more and more about birds (migration, species deep-dives, etc), I've also been learning more about climate change. It almost feels like the books are talking to each other, from reading about bird migration (A World on the Wing), to the memoir of a climate scientist (A Billion Butterflies), to climate change impacts in the ocean (Deep Water), to this book, published long before those others but seemingly bringing it all together: facts explored through fiction. One of my favorite ways to learn. show less

Protagonist Dellarobia Turnbow, an unhappily married mother of two, lives on her in-laws’ property in the Appalachian rural community of Feathertown, Tennessee. A colony of monarch butterflies has migrated to their property, resulting in an online sensation and eco-tourism. A scientist arrives to study the butterflies and enlists Dellarobia’s help. Her father-in-law wants to sell the timber where the butterflies are wintering.

This is an alternative fiction where monarch butterflies have gotten their signals crossed, and instead of wintering in Mexico (as they actually do), they have, instead, migrated to Tennessee. It is climate fiction, where the main conflict is between the patriarch, Bear Turnbow, who wants to sell the woodlands show more to a logging company and Dellarobia who wants to protect and study the butterflies. Bear’s wife, Hester, wants to protect them for religious reasons. It is also a story of an unhappy marriage. Dellarobia and husband, Cub Turnbow, got married as teens when she became pregnant. She had been hoping to go to college.

I very much enjoyed the science-related content, and there is a sizeable amount related to global warming, environmental impact of clear-cutting, migration, entomology, and species extinction. It contains descriptions of farming, particularly related to raising sheep, and the everyday life of a family. There is also a lot of political conflict in this novel, with characters representing climate change deniers in conflict against environmentalists. Education plays a key role in the plot.

The primary drawback is that the science content is presented in lengthy sections of dialogue between the scientist and the protagonist or the protagonist and her children. If done only once or twice, it would be fine, but these types of teaching moments occur throughout. The characters are well-formed, and Kingsolver has a way with words, particularly her descriptions of the natural world. Personally, I prefer a more subtle approach, but overall, I found it well worth reading. show less

Another book by Kingsolver that I really loved. This is her newest and it meshes the fictional plight of a monarch butterfly population with the challenges of a family living in rural Tennessee. The book centers around climate change and how it has effected the butterflies, causing them to winter in Tennessee when their normal mountain top in Mexico changes too much to sustain them. A scientist and his team arrive on the property of the Turnbow's where the parents Hester and Bear own the land and their adult child, Cub, and his wife Dellarobia live in a separate house with their two children.

Kingsolver's books work for me because there is always an interesting context (as in climate change here) but she keeps her characters at the show more heart of the novel and never loses sight of them in favor of preaching about a cause. Dellarobia is the heart of this novel and she is a beautifully written character - intelligent and funny (the kind of observant, quick, and occasional wit that you want in a best friend) but also fallible. I loved the character interactions in this book and also loved that the children were part of the story. I feel like children are seldom realistically drawn in a novel and these were done very well, including how Dellarobia felt about them. show less

I read this for a book club. The book approaches the subject of climate change from an interesting viewpoint: that of Dellarobia, a disillusioned wife and mother of two young children who stumbles across an incredible gathering of monarch butterfly on her Appalachian Tennessee farm. Really, this is an insightful, dead-on representation of what it's like to live in a small southern town where college is a snob's dream, high school sports determine life success, and everything is filtered through the Bible. I found it to be a frustratingly slow read. The first 75 pages were the worst, but there were several other other boggy bits that felt like they needed editing. The end, however, is quite satisfying.