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In Hovering Flight
At 34, Scarlet Kavanagh has the kind of homecoming no child wishes, a visit back to family and dear friends for the gentle passing of her mother, Addie, a famous bird artist and an even more infamous environmental activist. Though Addie and her husband, ornithologist Tom Kavanagh, have made their life in southeastern Pennsylvania, Addie has chosen to die at the New Jersey home of her dearest friend, Cora. This is because the Kavanagh’s ramshackle cottage is filled with too much history and because, in the last ten years or so, and for reasons that are not entirely clear, even bird song has seemed to make Addie angry, or sad, or both. Now, in their final moments together, Scarlet hopes to put to rest the last tensions that have marked their relationship.
Through tender conversations with Cora and Lou, another of Addie’s dear friends, Scarlet slowly comes to peace with her mother’s complicated life. But can she do the same with her own? Scarlet has carried a secret into these foggy days - a secret for Addie, one that involves Cora, too.
In its structure and style this novel follows in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf, Harriet Doerr, and Carol musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld’s own.
Through tender conversations with Cora and Lou, another of Addie’s dear friends, Scarlet slowly comes to peace with her mother’s complicated life. But can she do the same with her own? Scarlet has carried a secret into these foggy days - a secret for Addie, one that involves Cora, too.
In its structure and style this novel follows in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf, Harriet Doerr, and Carol musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld’s own.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2008
5 people are currently reading
336 people want to read
About the author
Joyce Hinnefeld
11 books18 followersJoyce Hinnefeld is an Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA and a program facilitator for the prison education and support program www.shining-light.com. She is the author of a short story collection, Tell Me Everything (1998), which was awarded the 1997 Breadloaf Writer's Conference Bakeless Prize in fiction in 1997, and of the novels In Hovering Flight (2008) and Stranger Here Below (2010), the story collection The Beauty of Their Youth (2020), and the forthcoming novel in stories The Dime Museum (August 2025).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
December 11, 2013
Americans spent $25 billion on books last year, about $6 billion less than they spent on bird watching. Publishers know this, of course, which is why we get a steady supply of updated and reconstituted guides from Sibley, Peterson, Audubon and their various descendants, executors and imitators. There's a natural sympathy between reading books and watching birds: The quiet, solitary pursuit of something beautiful and elusive in a novel or a forest requires the kind of patience and attention that our noisy culture rages against. But beyond this large assortment of illustrated guides, there's disappointingly little fiction for avid birders to read (compared to, say, the number of books about lawyers or serial killers or lawyers who are serial killers). If you're keeping a list -- and if you're a serious bird watcher, you are -- you've already read two very fine novels about John James Audubon: Creation, by Katherine Govier, and Audubon's Watch, by John Gregory Brown.
Here's another one to look out for: a rare, delicate novel that takes its title from Roger Tory Peterson's description of the bobolink's song: "in hovering flight and quivering descent, ecstatic and bubbling, starting with low, reedy notes and rollicking upward." Peterson's words serve as an apt description of this story, too, with its strangely complex movement and wide emotional range. You won't need any special knowledge of birds to enjoy In Hovering Flight, but it does require a birder's close attention because Joyce Hinnefeld is doing something difficult and intricate here.
The story takes place in 2002 in a cottage along the New Jersey shore during the morning hours after the death of Addie Kavanagh. A renowned environmental activist and artist, Addie had given up her battle against cancer and chosen this spot to die, surrounded by her husband, her adult daughter and two women she's known since college. Exhausted and grieving, they're lulled into reminiscences, and we're drawn along the circuitous flight of their memories of Addie and her profound influence on their lives.
For us, her story begins in 1965 when she takes an ornithology class from an unorthodox professor at a small Christian college in Pennsylvania. Dr. Tom Kavanagh quickly succumbs to Addie's charms, particularly the delightful entries in her bird-watching notebook: a kind of hybrid love letter, diary and field journal, illustrated with her captivating drawings. "I think I'm burning up with the same thing Audubon was burning with," she writes to her professor, without any regard for proper scientific form. "I am in love with birds, and I don't quite know what to do about it." You can't help but be caught up in the way Hinnefeld portrays their hunger for winged creatures, and for each other. "Tom Kavanagh's passion for birds did not frighten her," she writes. "What he had, and what she wanted, was clear to her from that first morning: a passion for birds -- for truly hearing, seeing, knowing them -- that made everything else in life seem trivial."
Early in their marriage, they collaborate in creating a seminal work of the environmental and antiwar movement, a book called A Prosody of Birds. Hinnefeld describes the book as something almost magical, "an odd blend of delicate artist's plates and dense poetic scansions of birdsongs . . . an idiosyncratic hodgepodge, wildly disorganized and provocative."
While they're creating this cult classic, they also have a daughter, Scarlet, named after the scarlet tanager. She adores her hippie parents even as she competes for their attention. Addie, in particular, is consumed with the kind of activist determination that eventually turns angry, despairing and relentlessly pessimistic. Even bird songs no longer give her joy; they only remind her that "breeding grounds are being decimated." It's a painful portrayal of the emotional toll that such awareness can wreak on a sensitive soul, falling into "bottomless despair at the plight of the earth." Who among us could function if we remembered every moment that we're being poisoned by "Paint. Gasoline. Seafood. Dental fillings, antiseptics, thermometers, blood-pressure gauges. Fluorescent bulbs"?
In the hours after Addie's death, Scarlet, now 34, serves as the focal point of the novel while she considers "her puzzle of a mother." She realizes with that strange jolt that comes to us late in life that "there were things about her mother and father that she didn't know." Who was this ferociously determined woman with "her moral superiority, her absolute confidence . . . all her raving . . . her angry rants"? Who could live with such a mother -- or now without her?
Among its many other subjects, this story is a moving consideration of the emotional paradox of hospice. Without descending into the medical pornography of so much writing about illness nowadays, Hinnefeld explores the ordeal of modern cancer treatment, the bargaining with toxins, the statistical gambling, the unthinkable challenge of deciding whether to endure one more round.
The movement of this novel is frankly a miracle, but a natural one -- like the graceful flight of a bird, gliding along a path you couldn't trace if you tried. I can't imagine how the author conceived of this structure or had any idea where she was as she was creating it. But the more I read, the more impressed I became at her gently insistent exploration. This is a book so assured and confident that it gradually teaches you how to read it. Hinnefeld moves again and again through the lives of Tom, Addie and Scarlet, revisiting the same events, letting details slowly accrue, building our understanding of these characters and their complicated friendships. A certain degree of suspense builds up, but that's not really the point. In Hovering Flight is as quiet as twilight and just as lovely.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
Here's another one to look out for: a rare, delicate novel that takes its title from Roger Tory Peterson's description of the bobolink's song: "in hovering flight and quivering descent, ecstatic and bubbling, starting with low, reedy notes and rollicking upward." Peterson's words serve as an apt description of this story, too, with its strangely complex movement and wide emotional range. You won't need any special knowledge of birds to enjoy In Hovering Flight, but it does require a birder's close attention because Joyce Hinnefeld is doing something difficult and intricate here.
The story takes place in 2002 in a cottage along the New Jersey shore during the morning hours after the death of Addie Kavanagh. A renowned environmental activist and artist, Addie had given up her battle against cancer and chosen this spot to die, surrounded by her husband, her adult daughter and two women she's known since college. Exhausted and grieving, they're lulled into reminiscences, and we're drawn along the circuitous flight of their memories of Addie and her profound influence on their lives.
For us, her story begins in 1965 when she takes an ornithology class from an unorthodox professor at a small Christian college in Pennsylvania. Dr. Tom Kavanagh quickly succumbs to Addie's charms, particularly the delightful entries in her bird-watching notebook: a kind of hybrid love letter, diary and field journal, illustrated with her captivating drawings. "I think I'm burning up with the same thing Audubon was burning with," she writes to her professor, without any regard for proper scientific form. "I am in love with birds, and I don't quite know what to do about it." You can't help but be caught up in the way Hinnefeld portrays their hunger for winged creatures, and for each other. "Tom Kavanagh's passion for birds did not frighten her," she writes. "What he had, and what she wanted, was clear to her from that first morning: a passion for birds -- for truly hearing, seeing, knowing them -- that made everything else in life seem trivial."
Early in their marriage, they collaborate in creating a seminal work of the environmental and antiwar movement, a book called A Prosody of Birds. Hinnefeld describes the book as something almost magical, "an odd blend of delicate artist's plates and dense poetic scansions of birdsongs . . . an idiosyncratic hodgepodge, wildly disorganized and provocative."
While they're creating this cult classic, they also have a daughter, Scarlet, named after the scarlet tanager. She adores her hippie parents even as she competes for their attention. Addie, in particular, is consumed with the kind of activist determination that eventually turns angry, despairing and relentlessly pessimistic. Even bird songs no longer give her joy; they only remind her that "breeding grounds are being decimated." It's a painful portrayal of the emotional toll that such awareness can wreak on a sensitive soul, falling into "bottomless despair at the plight of the earth." Who among us could function if we remembered every moment that we're being poisoned by "Paint. Gasoline. Seafood. Dental fillings, antiseptics, thermometers, blood-pressure gauges. Fluorescent bulbs"?
In the hours after Addie's death, Scarlet, now 34, serves as the focal point of the novel while she considers "her puzzle of a mother." She realizes with that strange jolt that comes to us late in life that "there were things about her mother and father that she didn't know." Who was this ferociously determined woman with "her moral superiority, her absolute confidence . . . all her raving . . . her angry rants"? Who could live with such a mother -- or now without her?
Among its many other subjects, this story is a moving consideration of the emotional paradox of hospice. Without descending into the medical pornography of so much writing about illness nowadays, Hinnefeld explores the ordeal of modern cancer treatment, the bargaining with toxins, the statistical gambling, the unthinkable challenge of deciding whether to endure one more round.
The movement of this novel is frankly a miracle, but a natural one -- like the graceful flight of a bird, gliding along a path you couldn't trace if you tried. I can't imagine how the author conceived of this structure or had any idea where she was as she was creating it. But the more I read, the more impressed I became at her gently insistent exploration. This is a book so assured and confident that it gradually teaches you how to read it. Hinnefeld moves again and again through the lives of Tom, Addie and Scarlet, revisiting the same events, letting details slowly accrue, building our understanding of these characters and their complicated friendships. A certain degree of suspense builds up, but that's not really the point. In Hovering Flight is as quiet as twilight and just as lovely.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
January 11, 2009
“According to John James Audubon, there was once a species of bird in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Cuveir’s kinglet, Regulus cuvieri or, as Audubon liked to call it, Cuvier’s wren.” So starts Joyce Hinnefeld’s novel In Hovering Flight. The bird itself, a drawing of which is featured on the book’s cover, may have been a joke, an invention by Audubon for unknown reasons. The sighting of the same bird by protagonist Addie Kavanagh, may have also been made up for similarly unknown reasons. We never get to find out.
Addie and her daughter are the focus of this elegant and entrancing work. Addie Kavanagh was Addie Sturmer before she fell in love with birds, as well as her Biology of Birds professor. But before the reader learns this, they learn that Addie is dead, and the foreshadowing of what they will do with her body comes in the first two pages. We meet the major players of the book as they gather on the porch of a seaside home in New Jersey; there are Addie’s friends, Cora and Lou, and Addie’s husband, Tom. We also meet Scarlet, Addie’s daughter, named for the Scarlet Tanager. All of the characters have secrets and shared moments, the blending of lives influenced by Addie, a passionate artist and environmental activist.
Scarlet could not always understand her mother. Addie was such an enigmatic and powerful woman with unflinching beliefs that she seemed to push some people away, even while drawing them towards her. Influenced by her mother and father’s work with birds, Scarlet herself is a poet. There are mentions in the text of Scarlet’s poetry, and I wish there would have been an appendix or reference section at the end that contained the poems in their full text, but that was not to be. The language creates images that are at times beautiful and at others, disturbing. Haunting in its simplicity is the connection between images of the bodies that fell from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the flight and glide of birds.
In Hovering Flight ranges from before Scarlet was born up to 2002 when Addie passes away from breast cancer. A number of powerful environmental issues are discussed—particularly the danger of the pesticides and chemicals that are found in the ground, water, and air. Addie also stands out as a strong woman, never backing down and always insistent that the world needed saving and that she could save it.
Review by Kristin Conard
Addie and her daughter are the focus of this elegant and entrancing work. Addie Kavanagh was Addie Sturmer before she fell in love with birds, as well as her Biology of Birds professor. But before the reader learns this, they learn that Addie is dead, and the foreshadowing of what they will do with her body comes in the first two pages. We meet the major players of the book as they gather on the porch of a seaside home in New Jersey; there are Addie’s friends, Cora and Lou, and Addie’s husband, Tom. We also meet Scarlet, Addie’s daughter, named for the Scarlet Tanager. All of the characters have secrets and shared moments, the blending of lives influenced by Addie, a passionate artist and environmental activist.
Scarlet could not always understand her mother. Addie was such an enigmatic and powerful woman with unflinching beliefs that she seemed to push some people away, even while drawing them towards her. Influenced by her mother and father’s work with birds, Scarlet herself is a poet. There are mentions in the text of Scarlet’s poetry, and I wish there would have been an appendix or reference section at the end that contained the poems in their full text, but that was not to be. The language creates images that are at times beautiful and at others, disturbing. Haunting in its simplicity is the connection between images of the bodies that fell from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the flight and glide of birds.
In Hovering Flight ranges from before Scarlet was born up to 2002 when Addie passes away from breast cancer. A number of powerful environmental issues are discussed—particularly the danger of the pesticides and chemicals that are found in the ground, water, and air. Addie also stands out as a strong woman, never backing down and always insistent that the world needed saving and that she could save it.
Review by Kristin Conard
July 8, 2015
This book was fascinating, and yet I kept abandoning it to read other books. I think it made me a little uncomfortable with its serious nature. I'd become accustomed to fictional birdwatchers being obsessed and a little silly. The main characters in this book aren't subjects of derision, but a "cool" intelligent couple living their lives in love with birds, nature and each other. The book was to me a journey into the life of a prickly, complex woman and her relationships, who is dying from cancer. Woven into this story is her lifelong obsession with the beauty and grace of the avian world, resulting in rage against people destroying the environment.
March 11, 2009
This book was a good story about art, mothers, daughters, love and birds. I could relate to all of it except for the birds part and I am looking forward to getting a book from the library about local birds and their calls.
October 28, 2019
This took me a long time to read, but not because I didn't like it. There were so many levels to it, and so many complex relationships. It was a love story, Tom and Addie Kavanaugh's. They met and fell for each other when she took his class on birds. She fell in love with him and with birds. He remained as he was in the beginning, a kind, loving, intelligent man. Addie evolved over the years from a young impressionable college girl to a law-defying activist , taxidermist and bitter environmentalist. I was impatient with her pessimism, but that fueled her creativity and added to her mystique. This was one of several books I have read lately in which mothers are indifferent to, and even hostile to, their daughters--sacrificing their relationship to a career or cause. Addie's daughter learns a great deal more about her mother after her death than she ever knew while Addie was alive.
The nature writing is just beautiful. There are many moments that I can relate to from my own experience of awe in the face of the beauty of birds and animals, woods and prairies. I also share the anger and disgust that Hinnefeld conveys with the damage that human progress causes in the natural world.
The nature writing is just beautiful. There are many moments that I can relate to from my own experience of awe in the face of the beauty of birds and animals, woods and prairies. I also share the anger and disgust that Hinnefeld conveys with the damage that human progress causes in the natural world.
December 31, 2024
… just lost my review…
But let me say this is mainly about relationships, and also women not just men being free to pursue their hearts even when also being a mother….and not being stuck with others’ expectations of you.
I had just had a conversation with a niece concerning pursuing work outside of parenting. She had expressed not being sure which direction she wanted to go with her college degree. I had told her she didn’t need to stick with just one job/career, start somewhere and move on when it felt right…. Then I read this novel, and Addie being swept up with knowledge and new understandings, passions, and reshaping her direction… perfect illustration of my point!
Beyond any plot, the writing in this book is a bit of poetry, sweeping you up…
But let me say this is mainly about relationships, and also women not just men being free to pursue their hearts even when also being a mother….and not being stuck with others’ expectations of you.
I had just had a conversation with a niece concerning pursuing work outside of parenting. She had expressed not being sure which direction she wanted to go with her college degree. I had told her she didn’t need to stick with just one job/career, start somewhere and move on when it felt right…. Then I read this novel, and Addie being swept up with knowledge and new understandings, passions, and reshaping her direction… perfect illustration of my point!
Beyond any plot, the writing in this book is a bit of poetry, sweeping you up…
January 16, 2020
gosh! this book has stayed with me for quite a while after finishing! I find myself thinking/dreaming about the characters. This book explores birds, art, female friend relationships, mother daughter relationships and husband and wife relationships, all while dealing with extreme social issues and grief. I would like to see this extended to a second novel to continue the growth of these characters.
February 5, 2023
The tension in this book really resonated with me. It seems like a relatively unusual tension for a fictional book, being between loving the natural world and feeling that the natural world is being destroyed so much and so rapidly that you can't really enjoy your love of nature any more. The author captured well the predicament of the activist: the more you fight for the natural world, the more you turn off those you are trying to convince.
May 17, 2020
Actually, this isn’t the book I read! It was The Beauty of Their Youth by this author - it wasn’t listed in Goodreads. This one was 5 unusual short stories.
October 20, 2016
pleasant read at the time but characters not particularly memorable weeks later
July 15, 2014
You know the thing that happens in reviews here, where some disappointed reader says, “I really wanted to like this book, but…” I’m sure you do. Then, the (totally justified) response is often, “I don’t get that. Don’t you want to like all the books you read?”
I’ve definitely been that disappointed reader, and yes: unless they’re wild cards recommended to me by someone extremely dear, I do want to like all the books I read. Multi-hundred-page hate reads don’t sound that appealing, you know? But only a very particular subset of reading disappointments evoke the “I really wanted to like this book, but” thing. And that subset consists of books which, a priori, appear to have multiple aspects of my personal Dream Book but then, a posteriori, don’t deliver. Like, say, if I was an English/Spanish bilingual, comics- and LOTR-obsessed, politically aware, magical realism-loving current or former adolescent boy who found The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to be sucky.
Which brings us to In Hovering Flight which I did really, really want to like, because we’ve got Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson and Käthe Kollwitz nods in a book with mothers, daughters, female friends and academics, not to mention a section entitled, “k-selected species,” which how many writers of fiction about emotions and relationships and stuff would even do anyway, but...
BUT
No. I can’t truly like it. Bummer.
It didn’t have to be this way. Its descriptive writing can be evocative and the characters are lifelike. Overall, Hinnefeld handles the tricky fiction/science hybridization quite decently, although the bird-watching and emotionally-driven-environmentalist pieces are incorporated into the story much more organically than the straight ecology and evolution, which seem pasted on a bit roughly.
The whole package, though, ended up feeling like a sloppy Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood without the humor. So not my Dream Book.
Intrusive writing choices really broke the deal. Like one of my personal nemeses, the first-chapter “let me list the characters in my life as if this were a play” expository device, pops up. Also, the author tends to foreshadow with an iron fist, which is not so enjoyable in itself, but also led to bits where I was like begging her to let me suspend my disbelief already, but she marched ahead to some very credulity-straining places.
But parts of the book really were quite nice. I can see how someone without my idiosyncrasies could have a dandy time reading this. It's not In Hovering Flight; it's me.
Guess I’m still searching for more writing that pushes my weird book buttons well. So if you happen to know about a screwball mystery set in 1920s London and the Australian rainforest that passes the Bechdel Test and features evolutionary biology, extended train travel, fungi, cloche hats and the Bauhaus movement, please let me know. I really want to like it.
I’ve definitely been that disappointed reader, and yes: unless they’re wild cards recommended to me by someone extremely dear, I do want to like all the books I read. Multi-hundred-page hate reads don’t sound that appealing, you know? But only a very particular subset of reading disappointments evoke the “I really wanted to like this book, but” thing. And that subset consists of books which, a priori, appear to have multiple aspects of my personal Dream Book but then, a posteriori, don’t deliver. Like, say, if I was an English/Spanish bilingual, comics- and LOTR-obsessed, politically aware, magical realism-loving current or former adolescent boy who found The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to be sucky.
Which brings us to In Hovering Flight which I did really, really want to like, because we’ve got Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson and Käthe Kollwitz nods in a book with mothers, daughters, female friends and academics, not to mention a section entitled, “k-selected species,” which how many writers of fiction about emotions and relationships and stuff would even do anyway, but...
BUT
No. I can’t truly like it. Bummer.
It didn’t have to be this way. Its descriptive writing can be evocative and the characters are lifelike. Overall, Hinnefeld handles the tricky fiction/science hybridization quite decently, although the bird-watching and emotionally-driven-environmentalist pieces are incorporated into the story much more organically than the straight ecology and evolution, which seem pasted on a bit roughly.
The whole package, though, ended up feeling like a sloppy Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood without the humor. So not my Dream Book.
Intrusive writing choices really broke the deal. Like one of my personal nemeses, the first-chapter “let me list the characters in my life as if this were a play” expository device, pops up. Also, the author tends to foreshadow with an iron fist, which is not so enjoyable in itself, but also led to bits where I was like begging her to let me suspend my disbelief already, but she marched ahead to some very credulity-straining places.
But parts of the book really were quite nice. I can see how someone without my idiosyncrasies could have a dandy time reading this. It's not In Hovering Flight; it's me.
Guess I’m still searching for more writing that pushes my weird book buttons well. So if you happen to know about a screwball mystery set in 1920s London and the Australian rainforest that passes the Bechdel Test and features evolutionary biology, extended train travel, fungi, cloche hats and the Bauhaus movement, please let me know. I really want to like it.
December 16, 2008
Addie and Tom Kavanagh met in the mid-sixties, when she was a student in his Biology of the Birds class with her best girlfriends, Cora & Lou. She was entranced by Tom that very first lecture, an introduction to the wonder of the world of birds.
"Hollow bones. Imagine what this means. Strength and lightness. Flight and surety. They hover too magnificently between the practical and the whimsical, the rational and the exquisitely nonsensical, for any student of their physiology and habitat and history to dare to linger too long at either pole, the strictly 'scientific' of the purely 'poetic'."
When Addie fell for Tom she also fell for the birds and birdsong that he so loved. She was an accomplished artist and in the early days of their marriage they collaborated on Tom's one and only book, "A Prosody of Birds," for which Addie did the illustrations and gained some recognition for her work.
But as the years pass, Addie finds that she can't appreciate the wonders of the natural world because she is constantly worn down by the worry that humans are destroying it at every turn. Having their only daughter, Scarlet, serves to deepen Addie's concern for the environment and she becomes involved with extremists. Her activities create a distance between her and her family and friends who are hard pressed to understand her single-minded purpose.
When Addie is dying of breast cancer, her family and friends gather at Cora's house on the Jersey shore. Cora's home has been a refuge for the whole family in the last twenty years. Cora has provided caring friendship to both Addie and Tom and has played a very maternal role in Scarlet's life. Though she loved her child very much, the kind of mothering care Cora provided to Scarlet seemed to be the thing missing in Scarlet's relationship with Addie.
In these last days of Addie's life, the complex history and relationships of these individuals will be relived. A tangled web of emotions and motivations exist between this group of people. But, just as Addie was their common denominator in life, her death brings clarity and healing in ways that none of them can imagine.
This is a beautifully written, richly layered novel. Joyce Hinnefeld has painted a realistic and powerful story about the ways that relationships change over time, between husband and wife, parent and child, even close friends. And her lovely, lyrical prose make it a book that is not to be missed.
"Hollow bones. Imagine what this means. Strength and lightness. Flight and surety. They hover too magnificently between the practical and the whimsical, the rational and the exquisitely nonsensical, for any student of their physiology and habitat and history to dare to linger too long at either pole, the strictly 'scientific' of the purely 'poetic'."
When Addie fell for Tom she also fell for the birds and birdsong that he so loved. She was an accomplished artist and in the early days of their marriage they collaborated on Tom's one and only book, "A Prosody of Birds," for which Addie did the illustrations and gained some recognition for her work.
But as the years pass, Addie finds that she can't appreciate the wonders of the natural world because she is constantly worn down by the worry that humans are destroying it at every turn. Having their only daughter, Scarlet, serves to deepen Addie's concern for the environment and she becomes involved with extremists. Her activities create a distance between her and her family and friends who are hard pressed to understand her single-minded purpose.
When Addie is dying of breast cancer, her family and friends gather at Cora's house on the Jersey shore. Cora's home has been a refuge for the whole family in the last twenty years. Cora has provided caring friendship to both Addie and Tom and has played a very maternal role in Scarlet's life. Though she loved her child very much, the kind of mothering care Cora provided to Scarlet seemed to be the thing missing in Scarlet's relationship with Addie.
In these last days of Addie's life, the complex history and relationships of these individuals will be relived. A tangled web of emotions and motivations exist between this group of people. But, just as Addie was their common denominator in life, her death brings clarity and healing in ways that none of them can imagine.
This is a beautifully written, richly layered novel. Joyce Hinnefeld has painted a realistic and powerful story about the ways that relationships change over time, between husband and wife, parent and child, even close friends. And her lovely, lyrical prose make it a book that is not to be missed.
June 25, 2011
I'm a picky reader. Often, I'll put a book down after the first paragraph because the writer, even in that short amount of time, has already unrolled two or more over-used narrative conventions as if they were writing according to a check-list or a formula. It's therefore refreshing, and even a little worth celebration, to find a book like Joyce Hinnefeld's "In Hovering Flight."[return] [return]The story begins with Addie Kavanagh, an artist, wife, mother, and crusading environmentalist, quietly dying of cancer in the beach front home of her college friend Cora. In the aftermath of this death, Addie's husband, Tom, her daughter, Scarlett, and Addie's two close friends, Cora and Lou, are left to figure out how best to fulfill Addie's defiant last wishes. [return] [return]Over the course of the events following Addie's death, we are lead back to Addie's budding romance with birds and art, as well as her meeting and subsequent affair with Tom Kavanagh, a professor at Burnham College. Through the course of the book we are given the large, almost epic arc of a single life. We are lead through Addie's passions, art, nature, the environment, and her family, and shown how they are baffling and troubling to Tom, and how they are transferred, silently to Scarlett. [return] [return]It is, in microcosm, similar to the development of a map over generations of exploration. With each new discovery the boundaries are pushed back, redrawn, and clarified. The known parts suddenly redefined by their expanding connection to things that still recede into darkness. [return] [return]As with any novel that begins at the end, it is required of the author to give us characters whose lives and thoughts are interesting, specific, and compelling. These types of character driven novels are difficult to pull off. Hinnefeld delivers a pitch perfect look at a life, and a family. Consistently sympathetic, and beautifully readable.[return][return]Original review at [return]http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0...
August 19, 2009
I found In Hovering Flight to be thought provoking and stirring. I started reading it and couldn't put it down until I finished it. It begins with a daughter coming home to say goodbye to her mother dying of cancer. Addie, the mother, a famous bird artist and environmental activist, is surrounded by her best friends from college, Cora & Lou, and her dear husband, Tom. In saying goodbye, we are whisked off to the beginning of Addie and Toms humble beginnings as student and college professor, lovers who are passionate about the natural world around them. We learn of a complicated life, of the strength of friendship and the agony of betrayal and how the sum of everything draws everyone back to Addie in the end. With the gentle remembrances of the people most important to Addie, Addies daughter Scarlet gains a better understanding of her mother and who she really was. On the surface it is a love story of Addie & Tom, and Addies struggle to be activist, mother and wife. But just below the surface it is a beautifully written story of the nature that surrounds us and the gifts that it can give us if we just stand still for a moment and take it all in.... listen to the song of the birds... feel the crush of the grass underneath our feet... Watch the soar of a hawk... and how life is precious for all of nature and we should try and appreciate it all while we can.
Bird lovers will appreciate the poetic voice Joyce Hinnefeld lends to the descriptions of the patient wait in the woods to see a scarlet tanger, a wood thrush or a beautiful cardinal, and the mysterious deciphering of a bird song heard in the distance. I've actually gone to Cape May birding during fall migration and this story captures the wonder of it all...
It's a beautifully written story. One that you may find yourself reading passages from again just to revisit the beauty of nature....
Bird lovers will appreciate the poetic voice Joyce Hinnefeld lends to the descriptions of the patient wait in the woods to see a scarlet tanger, a wood thrush or a beautiful cardinal, and the mysterious deciphering of a bird song heard in the distance. I've actually gone to Cape May birding during fall migration and this story captures the wonder of it all...
It's a beautifully written story. One that you may find yourself reading passages from again just to revisit the beauty of nature....
April 6, 2009
In Hovering Flight , opens in 2002 with Addie Kavanaugh, of Pennsylvania, dying of breast cancer at the home of a friend on the New Jersey shore. She is surrounded by family and friends and has made an strange last request for her remains: an illegal burial. When she dies her body is carried by loved ones to a walk-in in cooler at a seafood restaurant. (After that happened it thought this story might be a little far out for my tastes). I continued to read, and I was pleasantly surprised.
The story then takes the reader back in time to tell the story of how when Addie was a college art student, she fell in love with birds and with her biology professor, Tom Kavanaugh. Through Addie’s field guide journal entries she documents her college girl crush with Tom, who returns her affections, eventually divorces his wife and the two marry. The early years of marriage follows their birding passion, and Addie's involvement in political and environmental activism. When their daughter Scarlet is born, (named after a bird - Scarlet Tanager), Addie's passion for the outdoors, birding and painting, continues often with young Scarlet at her side trying to imitate her Hippie mother.
When Scarlet returns home as her mother is dying we learn more about the mother-daughter relationship. Scarlet had always felt she took a backseat to her mom's aviary passion, and she is determined to find out more about why the environment and activism meant so much to her mother. This book is not so much about Addie's death, but really about her life and her passions. It's a story about relationships, conflicts, nature and love. A beautiful family drama, that will make you as the reader understand Addie's strange last request, and make it seem not so strange after all.
The story then takes the reader back in time to tell the story of how when Addie was a college art student, she fell in love with birds and with her biology professor, Tom Kavanaugh. Through Addie’s field guide journal entries she documents her college girl crush with Tom, who returns her affections, eventually divorces his wife and the two marry. The early years of marriage follows their birding passion, and Addie's involvement in political and environmental activism. When their daughter Scarlet is born, (named after a bird - Scarlet Tanager), Addie's passion for the outdoors, birding and painting, continues often with young Scarlet at her side trying to imitate her Hippie mother.
When Scarlet returns home as her mother is dying we learn more about the mother-daughter relationship. Scarlet had always felt she took a backseat to her mom's aviary passion, and she is determined to find out more about why the environment and activism meant so much to her mother. This book is not so much about Addie's death, but really about her life and her passions. It's a story about relationships, conflicts, nature and love. A beautiful family drama, that will make you as the reader understand Addie's strange last request, and make it seem not so strange after all.
March 28, 2010
This elegant book has renewed my faith in reading after a string of so-so reads. I think it's a big question - how to write about love without making it the same old story - and it seems the secret is to write about the whole story, first love to death. Towards the end of the novel Tom (the leading man) says "you know, the only times we aren't mysterious to one another are probably when we're first falling in love and when one of us is dying. New love blinds us for a while to all the things we don't know".Tom and Addie fall in love around a common obsession with birds, Addie as a painter and Tom as a scientist. Through their lives as Addie develops a intense ecological awareness, this shifts and she almost becomes angry at the simple beauty of birds as involved as she is in various activist struggles. Artistically this is expressed through assembages of taxidermied birds, arranged to comment on environmental issues. These dark expressions of her rage find a popular audience. Through all this the bond with Tom morphs and shifts, as does her relationship with her daughter Scarlett. The writing is lovely and the novel, structured around Addie's first notebook with flashbacks and flashforwards, has a unity that is just so.
June 5, 2010
I always find it difficult to encapsulate a book in easy sound bites like In Hovering Flight. How can you capture the essence of how a book makes you feel; how it taps into your own memories of love, loss, family and youth? I found it an extraordinary privilege to share the lives of these characters.
On one level it is an intimate love story of Tom and Addie who ultimately share that love with their daughter Scarlet. On another level it is a shameful account of modern life and how it is destroying our enviroment. It made me aware of my surroundings as Spring brings rebirth to the trees and plants and birds, the joy of nature. On yet another level it is a compassionate ache of love and loss, of the death of children and parents.
But ultimately the novel transcends all of this by connecting us with our own humanity throught the humanity of these characters. E. M. Forester's great theme in literature was "only connect". This beautifully written book certainly effected me with all the joys and sadnesses that life can hand us. This story is as glorious and beautiful and fleeting as the birdsong that so entrances the characters who inhabit it. I had to occasionally stop reading it so I could delay the inevitable last page and have to say goodbye to these friends.
On one level it is an intimate love story of Tom and Addie who ultimately share that love with their daughter Scarlet. On another level it is a shameful account of modern life and how it is destroying our enviroment. It made me aware of my surroundings as Spring brings rebirth to the trees and plants and birds, the joy of nature. On yet another level it is a compassionate ache of love and loss, of the death of children and parents.
But ultimately the novel transcends all of this by connecting us with our own humanity throught the humanity of these characters. E. M. Forester's great theme in literature was "only connect". This beautifully written book certainly effected me with all the joys and sadnesses that life can hand us. This story is as glorious and beautiful and fleeting as the birdsong that so entrances the characters who inhabit it. I had to occasionally stop reading it so I could delay the inevitable last page and have to say goodbye to these friends.
March 27, 2009
Really nice cover art of a small bird in a Kalmia latifolia bush, but unfortunately that's about the most inviting thing about the book. The author can write-- it's intelligent, technically sound, well structured, and thought provoking. Trouble is that the thoughts inspired by both her subject matter and characters include,"What would be the best way to kill all these annoying *^$@&%!!!!!" and "How soon can I finish this and get on to something less depressing?" Of course, not every character has to be likeable, but can't even one be? Of course, social/moral issues belong in literature, but what opinions are you likely to sway with your writing if your readers have stopped halfway through, and wandered away sadly to find the fastest way of doing themselves in? This author is a better writer than I will ever be, but even I know that it doesn't hurt to make your reader smile once or twice along the way.
March 31, 2009
In Hovering Flight is a crisp fictional memoir about an ornithologist, an artist & environmentalist and a poet. It is a multi generational story of a father's, mother's and daughter's struggles to balance their love for one another with the demands and passions of their work.
In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mill's distinguishes between 'personal troubles of milieu' (such as individual job dissatisfaction or marital strife) and 'the public issues of social structure' (such as large scale underemployment or increased divorce rates). He challenges social scientists to examine individual experiences within the context of social relationships and to consider how individual biographies combine with history.
Warm, compelling and compassionate, Joyce Hinnefeld's first novel more than meets this mark, enriching our lives with creations of her own and enlarging our understanding of the world around us. Hinnefeld's ear for social context is spot on.
In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mill's distinguishes between 'personal troubles of milieu' (such as individual job dissatisfaction or marital strife) and 'the public issues of social structure' (such as large scale underemployment or increased divorce rates). He challenges social scientists to examine individual experiences within the context of social relationships and to consider how individual biographies combine with history.
Warm, compelling and compassionate, Joyce Hinnefeld's first novel more than meets this mark, enriching our lives with creations of her own and enlarging our understanding of the world around us. Hinnefeld's ear for social context is spot on.
May 23, 2024
Ethereal, haunting....The night after I started reading this, I actually dreamt I was reading this book, line by line, so much did the author's prose affect me. Initially, I was reluctant to read the book - I'm always leery about reading books about birds because they break my heart. But in the end & after some tears, I loved the interweaving of ornithology & ecology & Addie's life, & the quiet message for all of us that this book holds. For me, this is a perfect bridge from Silent Spring (Carson) to Silence of the Songbirds (Stutchbury).
March 18, 2009
This book was incredibly dull. What drove me really crazy was how a conversation between two people would be interrupted for a ten page flashback...over and over again. I did not find any of the characters at all moving or memorable – they were each a cheap cliché. Every interaction was terribly contrived or boring:
"'You're the ultimate k-selected mom,' Lou would say, missing the point about species of birds altogether, of course. But Addie loved that. 'Yes!' she'd say, 'I'm a good warbler! Sharing the planet, taking less space, only taking what my child and I need. No competitive exclusion principle, no intraspecific competition for me!'
How painful is that?
I only finished this book because I was hoping there was a deep dark secret that I hadn’t guessed at already...there wasn’t.
"'You're the ultimate k-selected mom,' Lou would say, missing the point about species of birds altogether, of course. But Addie loved that. 'Yes!' she'd say, 'I'm a good warbler! Sharing the planet, taking less space, only taking what my child and I need. No competitive exclusion principle, no intraspecific competition for me!'
How painful is that?
I only finished this book because I was hoping there was a deep dark secret that I hadn’t guessed at already...there wasn’t.
March 17, 2009
sorry I wasted the time hoping it would redeem itself by the end. it did not. not a single character to identify with.
started out pretty well, but maybe one has to be a birder to fully appreciate this one. SPOILER ALERT...Only on page 40, but having been through this recently, I can see how these folks are going to get around without having a death certificate?! IRS, banks, insurance companies, heck even the local police might notice that someone is missing and maybe you end up accused of murder? I'll keep reading because I am really curious about how that plays out. Also, I like birds as much as the next person, but I have to say both in fiction and reality, my observations about bird people as that they are total geeks, switch out the binoculars for a pocket protector and there you are!
started out pretty well, but maybe one has to be a birder to fully appreciate this one. SPOILER ALERT...Only on page 40, but having been through this recently, I can see how these folks are going to get around without having a death certificate?! IRS, banks, insurance companies, heck even the local police might notice that someone is missing and maybe you end up accused of murder? I'll keep reading because I am really curious about how that plays out. Also, I like birds as much as the next person, but I have to say both in fiction and reality, my observations about bird people as that they are total geeks, switch out the binoculars for a pocket protector and there you are!
October 17, 2008
I would give this book a 4.5 if the UI would let me.
Asking you to be quiet and listen, In Hovering Flight is a book about an uncommon family, an artist/activist, her husband the scientist, and their daughter the poet. Each of the characters is lovingly developed, with the light touch of a careful artist.
Something eludes each of them, like a bird that may or may not exist, and before you can confirm your sighting (from the "blind," which is such an amazing term for a birdwatching hut), it's gone.
But maybe if you could pin it down, could examine and confirm, the value of the thing -- its song and the flight for which its hollow bones were meant -- would be gone. Better to make record the moment in your field notebook, a painting, or a poem.
Asking you to be quiet and listen, In Hovering Flight is a book about an uncommon family, an artist/activist, her husband the scientist, and their daughter the poet. Each of the characters is lovingly developed, with the light touch of a careful artist.
Something eludes each of them, like a bird that may or may not exist, and before you can confirm your sighting (from the "blind," which is such an amazing term for a birdwatching hut), it's gone.
But maybe if you could pin it down, could examine and confirm, the value of the thing -- its song and the flight for which its hollow bones were meant -- would be gone. Better to make record the moment in your field notebook, a painting, or a poem.
April 4, 2009
I feel like Joyce Hennefeld personally took me out birdwatching and not only showed me the ropes, but introduced me to her intimate circle of friends. She literally made me feel like I was one of the group as I read the stories of how they all met and how their relationships evolved. It felt like she was saving intimate details and only sharing them with me when I knew enough about all of them that the time was right. Joyce Hinnefeld is expert at fleshing out the characters and making every one of them appealing and interesting in their own way. I love it when I finish a book and feel like I have learned something new and my compassion is stirred. I was fortunate to have been selected as an Early Reviewer for this book.
June 29, 2011
For me, In Hovering Flight, was a rare treat. Hinnefeld managed to make her characters captivating without being fluffy, infallible or even really accessible to the reader. I found myself wanting to know and understand more about them but at the same time respecting the fact that they needed their distance and to unfold in their own time.[return][return]The relationships in the book are not the oft described one-dimensional connections of lesser novels. They are complex, bittersweet and realistic. When I started reading I was intrigued, but by the end I had come to have a certain respect for story and those in it. All in all, a wonderful and satisfying read.
October 30, 2008
This was the Indie Next list pick for September, I believe. It's a beautiful little book about a couple's courtship and their daughter's reaction to her mother's death three decades later. The main character, Addie, speaks only through her field notes in the past, yet even when she's spoken of in the third person, she can be too didactic. This was probably the point, and I'm all for environmentalism, but her passion for it fell flat and felt repetitive for me. I was more interested in her daughter and friends than I was Addie herself. Lyrical, bittersweet, and enjoyable nonetheless.
November 23, 2008
This is a glistening creation with characters that are memorable and true. It drew my rapt attention, and reminded me in particular of some impassioned social critics that I have known in my own life. It is more of an interior, psychological story than an action tale. I highly recommend it.
(Special note to Peggy and Stacey--If the Hinnefeld name sounds familiar, that's because the author is indeed Stu's sister/Andy and Teddy's aunt. Amazing family--1 nuclear physicist, 2 engineers, and 1 dazzling creative writer. And those are just the members we know so far.)
(Special note to Peggy and Stacey--If the Hinnefeld name sounds familiar, that's because the author is indeed Stu's sister/Andy and Teddy's aunt. Amazing family--1 nuclear physicist, 2 engineers, and 1 dazzling creative writer. And those are just the members we know so far.)
December 20, 2008
Childhood and college friends remain intimates throughout their lives; supporting and loving each other. Artistic and principled life commitments are the themes of the novel; you'll learn a lot about birds. I was glad I read this book and would suggest doing it in a few consecutive readings; I was traveling and interrupted the read which affected the mood of the writing. If you receive this book as a gift you will enjoy it and if you find it on my bookshelf, feel free to read it, but I don't think you need to go buy it.
January 26, 2009
I enjoyed this book. It tells the story of an ornithology illustrator, from the time she is in college and meets/marries her ornithology professor, until her last days, dying of cancer. It goes back and forth between the two times, letting the story unfold. A big part of the book deals with her relationship with her daughter, Scarlet (named after a bird). (Or perhaps the lack of a "normal" parental relationship?) What is nice is how the author slowly reveals information each time she revisits a situation or time period.
February 18, 2011
Like some other reviewers, I have to agree that, for me, the best thing about this book was the beautiful artwork on the front cover.
I found the characters very hard to identify with, and felt little sympathy for any of them. I felt frequently sad while reading this; on its own not a terrible thing, but it lacked anything uplifting to redeem it.
On the plus side, the author clearly can construct a thoughtful sentence, and I found her birdwatching references evocative. Would really only recommend to birders.
I found the characters very hard to identify with, and felt little sympathy for any of them. I felt frequently sad while reading this; on its own not a terrible thing, but it lacked anything uplifting to redeem it.
On the plus side, the author clearly can construct a thoughtful sentence, and I found her birdwatching references evocative. Would really only recommend to birders.
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