Flight Behaviour

Dellarobia Turnbow feels trapped as a farm wife after giving up her plans when she became pregnant at seventeen. After years of unhappiness on a struggling farm, she seeks escape through a flirtation and hikes toward a secret meeting. Instead, she finds a wooded valley that appears to be burning. Scientists, religious leaders, and the media offer many explanations. The crisis brings farmers into contact with journalists, sightseers, and a biologist. As people judge her and the event, Dellarobia faces family, church, town, and a larger world on a search for truth that may overturn her beliefs.

Why You Should Read?

• Discover how Dellarobia Turnbow's life as a farm wife changes when she finds a strange valley that looks like fire.
• Follow Dellarobia as she faces family, church, town, and a wider world while searching for truth.
• Meet the scientists, religious leaders, journalists, and sightseers who bring competing explanations to a rural emergency.
• Explore themes of disappointment, belief, family, church, community judgment, and a search for truth.

About the Author

Barbara Kingsolver was born on April 8, 1955, and is an American writer of novels, essays, and poems. Her books include The Poisonwood Bible, about a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which describes her family trying to eat locally. She won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead. Her subjects often include social justice, biodiversity, and how people relate to their communities and environments. At DePauw University and the University of Arizona, she studied biology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Before writing novels, she worked as a freelance writer. She founded the Bellwether Prize in 2000, which supports writing for social change.