Book Beginnings on Fridays and Friday 56: Flight Behavior

BOOK BEGINNINGS: A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture. Or so it seemed for now, to a woman with flame-colored hair who marched uphill to meet her demise. Innocence was no part of this. She knew her own recklessness and marveled, really, at how one hard little flint of thrill could outweigh the pillowy, suffocating aftermath of a long disgrace.
FRIDAY 56: Butterflies crossed her field of vision continuously at close range, black-orange flakes that made her blink, and they merged in a chaotic blur in the distance, and she found it frankly impossible to believe what her eyes revealed to her. Or her ears: the unending rustle, like a taffeta dress.
GENRE: Literary / Women's Fiction / PoliticalNUMBER OF PAGES: 416AMAZON LINK: Flight Behavior
MY THOUGHTS: Ever since I read The Poisonwood Bible, I've been a Barbara Kingsolver fan. Although I'm only on Page 75 of Flight Behavior, I can tell it's going to be another favorite. I love her humor and the way she captures the beliefs, superstitions, and daily life of an Appalachian farming community - and that's just in the first 75 pages.

AMAZON SYNOPSIS (partial): 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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