In Hovering Flight

This lovely novel creeps up on you from the journals of a student artist/bird enthusiast and the scientific observations of her teacher/husband. Ultimately we get to know her her daughter as well. The love loss and longing evident as their lives unfold, gets under your skin and leaves you feeling an almost mystical connection to their well-examined lives. Marvelous, beautiful and comforting.

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 Shields: musical and dramatic, with myriad stories and voices. But the evocative language of this soaring novel is Hinnefeld’s own.

Publisher: Unbridled Books
Distributor: Perseus Distribution
Publication Date: 09-01-2008
Pages: 288
Measurements: 9.00in X 6.00in