Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

Cub rolled his eyes, and she felt overwhelmed with futile energy, like a dog chasing its tail. She could see this was going the way of all their arguments, poised to step from the ground of true complaints into the quicksand of trivial nonsense. With full righteous outrage intact.

“My husband is not a coward. I’ve seen him stick his whole arm into the baling machine to untangle the twine while it’s running. Trying to save a hay crop with rain coming in. I mean, if we’re talking guts. He and my in-laws face down hard luck six days a week, and on Sundays they go pray for the truly beleaguered.”

!One of the moments Dellarobia steps to bat, for her own! The book suffers criticism for being one sided, with the locals pitted as hicks, against the worldly and enlightened scientists. I think Kingsolver presents her heroine to understand that this divide exists but she never shies away from having Dellarobia confront it, as long as it’s organic to the storyline.