She becomes his assistant and he becomes her first real teacher. She’s poorly educated but smart and curious, hungry for a wider understanding. When Ovid Byron and his team of scientists arrive to study the Monarchs, Dellarobia’s world opens. But Tennessee is not the place for wintering butterflies, especially during a year of torrential rains and mudslides. To her, it appears to be a miracle and she’s awed by the beauty of the butterflies weighing down the limbs of trees.

A good way to conclude for now is to review Barbara Kingsolver’s book, Flight Behavior, a novel that mixes science and song and explores the intimate story of an individual and the universal experience of living through a time of enormous change on Earth.ĭellarobia, a young mother in Appalachia, discovers a colony of migrating Monarchs diverted from their normal flight behavior by the erratic weather of a warming Earth. Her character development is so honest and relatable that you can’t help but understand not only where she ends up, but where she came from as well.įlight Behavior is a challenge to anyone who has ever said “I’ll never understand that” or “they could never understand” in a way that diminishes your loyalty to party lines in favor of connecting with people on a more intimate level through love for the world we live in, commitment to improving our communities, and hope for the future.I’ve spent all month blogging – and thinking – about butterflies. The story quickly becomes one of awakening and passion as Dellarobia comes to realize how serious the predicament of the Monarchs is, and this small-town woman metamorphosizes from a bitter, somewhat small-minded young mother to a champion for the victims of climate change, both human and non-human. As she goes off one day for a tryst with a man she met in town, she is instead confronted by millions of monarch butterflies that seem to have settled down right in her rural Tennessee backyard. It follows a young mother, Dellarobia, who is coming to the realization that the dreams she had for her future are drifting further and further from her reach as she raises her two children as a quite reluctant stay-at-home mother. Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver is a quiet, subtle kind of novel that worms its way under your skin before you know it.

Barbara kingsolver monarchs