About Flight Behavior
- Summary from the dust jacket of the book -
"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 has settled for permanent disappointment but seeks momentary escape through an obsessive flirtation with a younger man. As she hikes up a mountain road behind her house to a secret tryst, she 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."
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- What is this so-called miracle? -
Millions of monarch butterflies, instead of making the journey to Mexico to ride out the winter, have mistakenly migrated to the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee. This climate, come wintertime, will be far too cold for the butterflies. These monarchs represent the vast majority of the monarch population and once winter hits, if a solution is not found, they will all die.
- Note -
This book is a work of fiction, but it deals with the real problem of climate change and is full of fact. While the accidental migration of the monarchs to Appalachia is fictional, the butterflies do make the 3,000 mile migration from their summer breeding grounds to Mexico for the winter.