Late Migrations - by Margaret Renkl (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Beautifully written, masterfully structured, and brimming with insight into the natural world . . . It has the makings of an American classic." --ANN PATCHETT

Book Synopsis

From New York Times contributing opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family--and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents--her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father--and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child's transition to caregiver.

And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds--the natural one and our own--"the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love's own twin."

Gorgeously illustrated by the author's brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut.

Review Quotes

Praise for Late Migrations

"Margaret Renkl is the most beautiful writer! I love this book." --Reese Witherspoon

"Equal parts Annie Dillard and Anne Lamott with a healthy sprinkle of Tennessee dry rub thrown in." --New York Times Book Review

"This is the kind of writing that makes me want to just stay put, reread and savor everything about that moment." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

"A beautiful accretion of poetic prose musings."--Oprah Daily

"Graceful . . . like a belated answer to E.B. White." --Wall Street Journal

"Conjure your favorite place in the natural world: beach, mountain, lake, forest, porch, windowsill rooftop? Precisely there is the best place in which to savor this book." --NPR

"A witty, warm and unaccountably soothing all-American story." --People

"Renkl guides us through a South lush with bluebirds, pecan orchards, and glasses of whiskey shared at dusk. . . as it celebrates bounty, it also mourns the profound losses we face every day." --O, the Oprah Magazine

"The miniature essays in Late Migrations approach with modesty, deliver bittersweet epiphanies, and feel like small doses of religion."--Literary Hub

"[A] magnificent debut . . . Renkl instructs that even amid life's most devastating moments, there are reasons for hope and celebration."--Publishers Weekly

"Reflective and gorgeous."--Jenna Bush Hager, TODAY.com

"[A] stunning collection of essays merging the natural landscapes of Alabama and Tennessee with generations of family history, grief and renewal. Renkl's voice sounds very close to the reader's ear: intimate, confiding, candid and alert."--Shelf Awareness

"This is the story of grief accelerated by beauty and beauty made richer by grief."--The Rumpus

"Renkl has depicted a glorious world in this collection--a glorious world not despite its darkness, but because of it. Her prose warms and welcomes you into her world of bewildering opposites that we all experience and can connect to grief and joy, life and death, fear and acceptance."--Brevity

"Beautiful is the word, beautiful all the way through."--Philadelphia Inquirer

"Clear-eyed revelations about the cycle of life and death . . . [Renkl's] prose style is accessible and also astonishing."--Southern Review of Books

"One of the best books I've read in a long time . . . [and] one of the most beautiful essay collections that I have ever read. It will give you chills."--Silas House, author of Southernmost

"It has the makings of an American classic."--Ann Patchett, author of Commonwealth

"Renkl's deft juxtapositions close up the gap between humans and nonhumans and revive our lost kinship with other living things."--Richard Powers, author of The Overstory

"Renkl holds my attention with essays about plants and caterpillars in a way no other nature writer can."--Mary Laura Philpott, author of I Miss You When I Blink

"Late Migrations is flat-out brilliant and it has arrived right on time."--John T. Edge, author of The Potlikker Papers

"Gracefully written and closely observed, Margaret Renkl's lovely essays are tinged with the longing for family and places now gone while rejoicing in the flutter of birds and life still alive."--Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams

"Late Migrations is a continual revelation."--Lee Smith, author of Lost Girls

About the Author

Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. She was the founding editor of Chapter 16, the daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina. She lives in Nashville.