Flight Behavior (52 page)

Authors: Barbara Kingsolver

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BOOK: Flight Behavior

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She was wary of taking her eyes very far from her footing, but now she did that, lifted her sights straight up to watch them passing overhead. Not just a few, but throngs, an airborne zootic force flying out in formation, as if to war. In the middling distance and higher up they all flowed in the same direction, down-mountain, like the flood itself occurring on other levels. The highest ones were faint trails of specks, ellipses. Their numbers astonished her. Maybe a million. The shards of a wrecked generation had rested alive like a heartbeat in trees, snow-covered, charged with resistance. Now the sun blinked open on a long impossible time, and here was the exodus. They would gather on other fields and risk other odds, probably no better or worse than hers.

The sky was too bright and the ground so unreliable, she couldn’t look up for very long. Instead her eyes held steady on the fire bursts of wings reflected across water, a merging of flame and flood. Above the lake of the world, flanked by white mountains, they flew out to a new earth.

Author’s Note

I
n February 2010, an unprecedented rainfall brought down mudslides and catastrophic flooding on the Mexican mountain town of Angangueo. Thirty people were killed and thousands lost their homes and livelihoods. To outsiders, the town was mainly known as the entry point for visitors to the spectacular colonies of monarch butterflies that overwinter nearby. The town is rebuilding, and the entire migratory population of North American monarchs still returns every autumn to the same mountaintops in central Mexico. The sudden relocation of these overwintering colonies to southern Appalachia is a fictional event that has occurred only in the pages of this novel.

The rest of the biological story, like the flood of Angangueo, is unfortunately true. The biotic consequences of climate change tax the descriptive powers, not to mention the courage, of those who know most about it. I’ve looked to many expert sources for guidance in constructing a fictional story within a plausible biological framework. My greatest debt is to Lincoln P. Brower and Linda Fink for graciously opening their home, laboratories, research records, and most impressively, their imaginations. Their enthusiastic indulgence of a novelist’s speculations was so generous, as is their scientific dedication to the world and its life. Any errors that persisted beyond the careful tutelage of Drs. Brower and Fink are purely mine.

I also thank Bill McKibben and his 350.org colleagues for the most important work in the world, and the most unending. His book
Eaarth
gave me important insights, as did Sue Halpern’s
Four Wings and a Prayer
, and Clive Hamilton’s
Requiem for a Species.
Lamb rescue notes by Carol Ekarius in
Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep
have proven crucial in both art and life.
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animal Life
, edited by Frederick Drimmer (1952), was a fortuitous find. I’m grateful to Rob Kingsolver and Robert Michael Pyle for early encouragement, and for the published work of many other entomologists including Sonia Altizer, Karen Oberhauser, William Calvert, and Chip Taylor, founder of Monarch Watch. Francisco Marín was an intrepid companion through the unspeakable in Angangueo and the unearthly at Cerro Pelón. Dr. Preston Adams was the first person ever to tell me I was a scientist. I’ve not forgotten.

For thoughtful comments on the manuscript and invaluable support I thank Terry Karten, Sam Stoloff, Frances Goldin, Steven Hopp, Lily Kingsolver, Ann Kingsolver, Virginia Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, Jim Malusa, and most of all, from beginning to end, Judy Carmichael. Steven and Lily climbed the mountains and plumbed the depths. Margarita Boyd provided spiritual insights, and Rachel Denham opened doors. Walter Ovid Kinsolving wrote the engaging genealogy that gave me virtually all the first and last names that appear in this novel (remixed), picked from my own family tree. For the spirit in which they rise to every occasion, from shearing day to publication day, I thank my family. Part and parcel, I am yours.

About the Author

BARBARA KINGSOLVER is the author of eight works of fiction, including the novels
The Lacuna
,
Prodigal Summer, The Poisonwood Bible
, and
The Bean Trees
. Also among her published books are poetry and essay collections, and the nonfiction best seller
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. In 2000 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. Kingsolver received the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for the body of her work, and in 2010 won Britain’s Orange Prize for
The Lacuna
. Before she made her living as a writer, Kingsolver earned degrees in biology and worked as a scientist. She now lives with her family on a farm in southern Appalachia.

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Also by Barbara Kingsolver

F
ICTION

The Lacuna

Prodigal Summer

The Poisonwood
Bible

Pigs in Heaven

Animal Dreams

Homeland and Other
Stories

The Bean Trees

E
SSAYS

Small Wonder

High Tide in Tucson: Essays
from Now or Never

P
OETRY

Another America

N
ONFICTION

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:
A Year of Food Life

(with Steven L. Hopp
and Camille Kingsolver)

Last Stand: America’s Virgin
Lands

(with photographs by
Annie Griffiths Belt)

Holding the Line: Women in
the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983

Credits

Cover design and illustration by Robin Bilardello

This book is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

FLIGHT
BEHAVIOR
. Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved
under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the
required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to
access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be
reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored
in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form
or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter
invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © NOVEMBER 2011 ISBN:
9780062124289

Excerpt from “Now Is the Cool of the Day,” by
Jean Ritchie, is used by permission. © 1971 Geordie Music Publishing Co.,
all rights reserved.

An excerpt from this novel originally appeared
in
Orion
, www.orionmagazine.org.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kingsolver, Barbara.

Flight behavior : a novel / by Barbara
Kingsolver.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-06-212426-5 (Hardcover)

1. Women biologists—Fiction. 2.
Curiosities and wonders—Fiction. 3. Tennessee—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.I496F55 2012

813’.54—dc23