Flight Behavior

 

Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver

Fiction

2012

Finished on August 21, 2025

Rating: 4/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Flight Behavior takes on one of the most contentious subjects of our time: climate change. With a deft and versatile empathy Kingsolver dissects the motives that drive denial and belief in a precarious world.

Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.

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.

It's been a dozen years since I first read Flight Behavior, one of several books by Barbara Kingsolver that I've loved. I recommended the novel to my book group, as I have always hoped to read it a second time. I'm not sorry I did, but I had forgotten so much about the plot, thinking the novel was mostly about the migration of Monarch butterflies. There is so much more packed in to Delorobia's story, and I had a hard time getting interested in her domestic conflicts. I wound up enjoying the book, but not quite as well as the first time around. The following is from my 2012 post:

Flight Behavior was a wonderful read and, I believe, Kingsolver's best yet. The writing is exquisite and captivating and after two months, I'm still thinking about Dellarobia, Ovid Byron and the Monarch butterflies. I marked several passages in my book, but then made the decision to give up blogging and loaned my ARC to a friend. Now I don't have any to share with you, but perhaps that's for the best. This is a novel you will want to discover on your own. 

With the exception of The Lacuna and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I've read all of Kingsolver's novels and essay collections. I've enjoyed each book, but my favorites are The Poisonwood Bible and High Tide In Tucson, both of which I'd love to re-read someday. Flight Behavior is now at the top of the list. Highly recommend!

I've read nine books by Barbara Kingsolver, and The Lucana remains on my TBR shelf. What am I waiting for??

Fiction:

The Bean Trees (5/5)

Animal Dreams (pre-blogging days)

Pigs in Heaven (4/5)

The Poisonwood Bible (4.5/5)

Prodigal Summer (pre-blogging days)

Unsheltered (4/5)

Demon Copperhead (5/5)

Nonfiction:

High Tide in Tucson (4.5/5 and 2/5)

Small Wonder (3.5/5)