Flight Behavior (Reprint) (Paperback) by Barbara Kingsolver

About the Book

In a riveting story by the author of "The Poisonwood Bible, " a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee experiences something she cannot explain. Her discovery energizes various competing factions, trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world.

Book Synopsis

New York Times Bestseller

Indie Bestseller

Barnes & Noble Bestseller

National Bestseller

Amazon Best Book of the Month

Indie Next Pick

Best Book of the Year: New York Times Notable, Washington Post Notable, Amazon Editor's Choice, USA Today's Top Ten (#1), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star

Prize-winning author: Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award), Orange Prize for Fiction

Prize-winning Author: National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Orange Prize for Fiction, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award)

Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words.
--Time

The extraordinary New York Times bestselling author of The Lacuna (winner of the Orange Prize), The Poisonwood Bible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver returns with a truly stunning and unforgettable work. Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions--religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians--trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver's must thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.

From the Back Cover

New York Times Notable Book

Washington Post

Best Book Of The Year

Amazon's Top 100: Editor's Choice

Usa Today Best Book Of The Year

Dellarobia Turnbow is a restless farm wife who gave up her own plans when she accidentally became pregnant at seventeen. Now, after a decade of domestic disharmony on a failing farm, she seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man.

She hikes up a mountain road behind her house toward a secret tryst, but instead encounters a shocking sight: a silent, forested valley filled with what looks like a lake of fire. She can only understand it as a cautionary miracle, but it sparks a raft of other explanations from scientists, religious leaders, and the media. The bewildering emergency draws rural farmers into unexpected acquaintance with urbane journalists, opportunists, sightseers, and a striking biologist with his own stake in the outcome.

As the community lines up to judge the woman and her miracle, Dellarobia confronts her family, her church, her town, and a larger world, in a flight toward truth that could undo all she has ever believed.

Review Quotes

"...Enthralling...Dellarobia is appealingly complex as a smart, curious, warmhearted woman desperate to-no resisting the metaphor here-trade her cocoon for wings."--Oprah.com

"a delicate symbiosis between the sacred and the scientific in this richly rewarding novel that will both entertain and incite its readers."--BookPage

"[Kingsolver's] keen grasp of delicate ecosystems-both social and natural-keeps the story convincing and compelling."--The New Yorker

"A dazzling page-turner"--Elle

"By the end of FLIGHT BEHAVIOR, it's clear that Kingsolver's passionate voice and her ability to portray the fragility of the natural world, and why we should care about it, are as strong as ever."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Dellarobia is a smart, fierce, messy woman, and one can't help rooting for her to find her wings."--Entertainment Weekly

"Dellarobia is appealingly complex as a smart, curious, warmhearted woman desperate to-no resisting the metaphor here-trade her cocoon for wings."--O, the Oprah Magazine

"Drawing on both her Appalachian roots and her background in biology, Kingsolver delivers a passionate novel on the effects of global warming."--Booklist, Starred Review

"FLIGHT BEHAVIOR is a book worth reading twice? first for the intricacies of character, second for the dense, beautiful language Kingsolver puts on the page. She's a keen observer of the messiness and unexpected beauty of the quotidian."--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"FLIGHT BEHAVIOR is a terrifically entertaining read about a spirited young woman you'll miss the minute you reach the last page."--USA Today

"Kingsolver has constructed a deeply affecting microcosm of a phenomenon that is manifesting in many different tragic ways, in communities and ecosystems all around the globe. This is a fine and complex novel."--Seattle Times

"Kingsolver has written one of the more thoughtful novels about the scientific, financial and psychological intricacies of climate change. And her ability to put these silent, breathtakingly beautiful butterflies at the center of this calamitous and noisy debate is nothing short of brilliant."--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"Kingsolver is a storyteller first and foremost, as sensitive to human interactions and family dynamics as she is to ecological ones."--NPR

"Marvelous...This is fiction rich in empathy, wit and science. Like the butterflies that astonish Feathertown, Kingsolvian gifts are 'fierce and wondrous, ' 'colors moving around like fire.'"--New York Times

"Novelists like Kingsolver have a particular knack for making us empathize with lives that may bear little resemblance to our own...What lifts FLIGHT BEHAVIOR...is not just Kingsolver's nuanced and funny prose; it's Dellarobia's awakening to the possibilities around her."--Julia Ingalls, Salon

"One of the gifts of a Kingsolver novel is the resplendence of her prose. She takes palpable pleasure in the craft of writing, creating images that stay with the reader long after her story is done...(a) majestic and brave new novel."--New York Times Book Review

"So captivating is this grand, suspenseful plot and the many subplots rising and falling beneath it that it takes some time before we realize what this story is really about -- climate change."--Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Spirituality, a troubled marriage, global warming...Kingsolver's latest is a bold mélange, but it works."--People

"With her powerful new novel, Kingsolver delivers literary fiction that conveys an urgent social message... a clarion call about climate change, too lucid and vivid for even skeptics to ignore."--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review