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Flight Behavior
- Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Length: 16 hrs and 56 mins
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Publisher's summary
New York Times best seller
Indie best seller
Barnes & Noble best seller
National best seller
Amazon Best Book of the Month
Indie Next Pick
Best book of the year: New York Times Notable, Washington Post Notable, Amazon Editor’s Choice, USA Today’s Top Ten (#1), St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star
Prize-winning author: Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award), Orange Prize for Fiction
Prize-winning author: National Humanities Medal, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, Orange Prize for Fiction, Dayton Literary Peace Prize (Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award)
"Kingsolver is a gifted magician of words." (Time)
The extraordinary New York Times best-selling author of The Lacuna (winner of the Orange Prize), The Poisonwood Bible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver returns with a truly stunning and unforgettable work.
Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver's riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions - religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians - trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world.
Flight Behavior is arguably Kingsolver's most thrilling and accessible novel to date, and like so many other of her acclaimed works, represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.
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Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
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Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
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A Death in Kitchawank, and Other Stories
- By: T. C. Boyle
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Few authors write with such sheer love of story and language as T. C. Boyle, and that is nowhere more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and always entertaining short stories. Here are 14 new tales previously unpublished in book form. By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle's stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories here reflect his maturing themes.
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Mixed Bag
- By AuntGert on 09-22-20
By: T. C. Boyle
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The Walking People
- By: Mary Beth Keane
- Narrated by: Sile Bermingham
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Greta Cahill never believed she would leave her village in the west of Ireland until she found herself on a ship bound for New York, along with her sister Johanna and a boy named Michael Ward. Labeled a "softheaded goose" by her family, Greta discovers that in America she can fall in love, raise her own family, and earn a living.
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Irish immigratn story
- By Chrissie on 09-10-13
By: Mary Beth Keane
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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The One-in-a-Million Boy
- By: Monica Wood
- Narrated by: Chris Ciulla
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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For years, guitarist Quinn Porter has been on the road, chasing gig after gig, largely absent to his twice-ex-wife Belle and their odd, Guinness records-obsessed son. When the boy dies suddenly, Quinn seeks forgiveness for his paternal shortcomings by completing the requirements for one of his son's unfinished Boy Scout badges. For seven Saturdays Quinn does yard work for Ona Vitkus, the spry 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant the boy had visited weekly.
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Loved it
- By Justin on 10-20-16
By: Monica Wood
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Shadow Show
- All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury
- By: Sam Weller - editor, Mort Castle - editor
- Narrated by: George Takei, Edward Herrmann, Kate Mulgrew, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Ray Bradbury - peerless storyteller, poet of the impossible, and one of America's most beloved authors - is a literary giant whose remarkable career spanned seven decades. Now 26 of today's most diverse and celebrated authors offer new short works in honor of the master; stories of heart, intelligence, and dark wonder from a remarkable range of creative artists.
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THE MAN WHO FORGOT RAY BRADBURY
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 05-27-17
By: Sam Weller - editor, and others
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Emmie Lang
- Narrated by: Piper Goodeve, Peter Berkrot, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Stopping a tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn't like to take credit. As amazing as these powers may appear, they tend to manifest themselves at inopportune times and places. From freak storms to trees that appear to grow over night, Weylyn's unique abilities are a curiosity at best and at worst, a danger to himself and the woman he loves. But Mary doesn't care.
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An Accidental Wonder!
- By Brandy Pendergrass on 02-16-18
By: Ruth Emmie Lang
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A Girl Named Zippy
- Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
- By: Haven Kimmel
- Narrated by: Haven Kimmel
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of 300 people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period - people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
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Beautifully written, beautifully read.
- By shopgirl on 03-06-08
By: Haven Kimmel
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Clear-eyed and spirited, Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a completely unexpected child, a three-year-old American Indian girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots.
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Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
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The Lacuna
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Born in the United States, but reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers and, one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed muralist Diego Rivera. When he goes to work for Rivera, his wife, exotic artist Kahlo, and exiled leader Lev Trotsky, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution.
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Great Writers need Great Narrators
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Small Wonder
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In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us from one of history's darker moments an extended love song to the world we still have. From its opening parable gleaned from recent news about a lost child saved in an astonishing way, the book moves on to consider a world of surprising and hopeful prospects, ranging from an inventive conservation scheme in a remote jungle to the backyard flock of chickens tended by the author's small daughter.
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Not much of a Wonder
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Spring for a professional narrator, please!
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Amazing!
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Animal Dreams
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Animal Dreams is a passionate and complex novel about love, forgiveness, and one woman's struggle to find her place in the world. At the end of her rope, Codi Noline returns to her Arizona home to face her ailing father, with whom she has a difficult, distant relationship. There she meets handsome Apache trainman Loyd Peregrina, who tells her, "If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."
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Barbara, can we have a "re-do?"
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Great Writers need Great Narrators
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Not much of a Wonder
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The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to Scripture - is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.
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Listen to the sample first!
- By Cheryl D on 07-30-08
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet, paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle follows the family through the first year of their experiment.
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mixed feelings
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In her second poetry collection, Barbara Kingsolver offers reflections on the practical, the spiritual, and the wild. She begins with "how to" poems addressing everyday matters such as being hopeful, married, divorced; shearing a sheep; praying to unreliable gods; doing nothing at all; and of course, flying. Next come rafts of poems about making peace (or not) with the complicated bonds of friendship and family, and making peace (or not) with death, in the many ways it finds us.
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A Joy to Read
- By Lee Moderow on 05-20-21
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Demon Copperhead
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Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
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Wow! It’s a Masterpiece
- By Billy on 10-25-22
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Homeland and Other Stories
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
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- Abridged
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Barbara Kingsolver has written these five short stories with the same wit and sensitivity that characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees. Spreading her characters over a variety of colorful landscapes, she tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance.
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Another great book by Kingsolver!
- By Rosemarie on 01-09-12
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Holding the Line
- Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
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- Unabridged
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Holding the Line, Barbara Kingsolver's first nonfiction book, is the story of women's lives transformed by an a signal event. Set in the small mining towns of Arizona, it is part oral history and part social criticism, exploring the process of empowerment that occurs when people work together as a community. Like Kingsolver's award-winning novels, Holding the Line is a beautifully written book grounded on the strength of its characters.
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Didn’t finish - not interested
- By Amazon Friend on 07-23-24
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High Tide in Tucson
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Exploring the themes of family, community, and the natural world with the vision of a poet and the eyes of a scientist, Barbara Kingsolver writes about ideas as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom.
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Good book, but not unabridged...
- By Kathy Roberts Forde on 04-20-20
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Pigs in Heaven
- By: Barbara Kingsolver
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- Abridged
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In Heaven, Oklahoma, pigs are both edible and inspirational! The story begins when a 6-year-old named Turtle is the sole witness to a freak accident. As a result she and her adoptive mother, Taylor, have a moment of celebrity that changes their lives forever. After seeing them on television, Annawake Fourkiller, a young attorney for Oklahoma's Cherokee Nation, claims that Turtle was improperly taken from the tribe.
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I didn't realize it was the abridged version
- By David Andrews on 02-27-15
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She Got Up Off the Couch
- By: Haven Kimmel
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- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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When we last saw Zippy, she was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in her home. Her mother, Delonda, had literally just gotten up off the couch and ridden her rickety bicycle down the road. Her dad was off somewhere, gambling or "working." And Zippy was lost in her own fabulous world of exploring the fringes of Moorland, Indiana.
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Great fun !!
- By Kim on 04-20-11
By: Haven Kimmel
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Demon Copperhead
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Barbara Kingsolver ontving de Pulitzer Prize en de Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 voor Demon Copperhead, een beeldend en episch verhaal over een jongen die opgroeit te midden van armoede en drugsverslaving. Damon Fields, het zoontje van een alleenstaande tienermoeder, woont in een trailer in de bergen van de zuidelijke Appalachen. Hij heeft hetzelfde koperkleurige haar als zijn overleden vader, aan wie hij ook de bijnaam 'Demon Copperhead' te danken heeft. Afgezien van goede looks, bijtende humor en overlevingsdrift zit hem weinig mee in het leven. Zijn moeder worstelt met haar verslaving aan pijnstillers.
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A Sand County Almanac
- And Sketches Here and There
- By: Aldo Leopold, Barbara Kingsolver - introduction
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1949 and praised in the New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite", A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.
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Great in some ways; in others, wtf!
- By RG on 06-22-20
By: Aldo Leopold, and others
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Postcards from the Edge
- By: Carrie Fisher
- Narrated by: Carrie Fisher
- Length: 2 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Here are the excruciatingly funny adventures of Suzanne Vale — a young film star and drug addict — who survives a rehab clinic only to rejoin the equally harrowing world of Hollywood. Out there on the edge, despair flips into hilarity, and we're left laughing as Suzanne struggles to come to terms with her various fantasylands.
By: Carrie Fisher
What listeners say about Flight Behavior
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kathleen
- 11-17-12
Everything known about Monarch butterflies
If you could sum up Flight Behavior in three words, what would they be?
Unique, scientific, concerning
Would you be willing to try another book from Barbara Kingsolver? Why or why not?
I have read many books by Barbara Kingsolver and have thoroughly enjoyed most of them.
I liked the basic story of Flight Behavior, particularly the characters, but I did find it a bit preachy and that, in some sections, the scientific information was heavy-handed. I would have to really look at the next book before I decided to read it or not.
What does Barbara Kingsolver bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Her intonation and expression helped me understand the characters better. Because she had created these characters, she was able to give them more life and passion when she read the story.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The conversation between Dellarobia and her mother-in-law Hester towards the end of the book, where Hester finally opens up to Dellarobia, was the most moving for me as it gave Hester real humanity and explained why she had always been stand-offish.
Any additional comments?
I liked the story in general but it was obvious that Kingsolver was on her soap-box about climate change. The ending was not very satisfying as it left the me hanging as to what happened to the Turnbow family and was rather apocalytic.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Carey
- 12-29-12
Chagrined to say that I was disappointed
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
The Poison Wood Bible is one of my most beloved books, so I came into this with very high expectations. I respect Ms. Kingsolver and her work but I didn't feel for these characters or their exploits. I kept hoping it would pick up but the narrative plotted along at an uneventful pace.
I was most disappointed in the performance. I so wish that in general authors would leave it to the professionals for narration. Although I found Ms. Kingsolver's voice distracting and irritating in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle it was forgivable considering it was mainly a memoir, but true fiction deserves to shine with the very specific skills of an actor.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Gwyneth
- 02-03-20
Beautiful, multi-layered story: a must-read
I've been a Kingsolver fan since my friend's mom loaned me "Bean Trees in Heaven" when I was a teenager. I love her protagonists: normal people struggling through sometimes ordinary and sometimes extraordinary situations, but always relatable. It feels like I find new ways to think my own thoughts through her writing. Not to mention Kingsolver's beautiful prose.
Every time I read one of her new books, I'm afraid that it won't live up to my expectations--but it always does. "Flight Behavior" is no different. It's slow. This isn't your typical potboiler novel with a super suspenseful and highly theatrical conflict. Instead, you really come to know the protagonist. Through her, you can see both sides of the climate change debate. You can feel the tug of peer pressure and her family--the way that she becomes ostracized as she starts to explore education in a town that doesn't value it. The scientists are distinctly Other: monied and wearing specialized Patagonia jackets to hike through a terrain that she lives in every day with normal hand-darned clothes from Goodwill.
As much as I know that the book had a liberal leaning, I also felt like it was written to help us high-falutin' scientists empathize and see how we can do a better job connecting with people. There was a scene in which Dellarobia is talking to her mentor. She tells him that obviously people don't like what scientists have to say. "Yeah," you think. "That is a good point." The townspeople love the butterflies as a message from God but are very resistant to them as a harbinger of doom and global warming. Maybe there is a better way to reach the public. But after Ovid gives an impassioned interview, there's also the realization that being overly polite and concerned with how one appears can get emotionally taxing and take away from what really needs to be said.
If you like to think, this book is for you. Kingsolver does an amazing job of laying out a multi-faceted, multi-layered story that is about motherhood and family as much as it is about science. I am consistently awestruck by her ability to interweave so many resonant themes, with beautiful imagery and never too heavy-handed.
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- Anne L.
- 10-20-22
One of the best books I've read this year.
First let me say that I have not been a fan of Kingsolver's novels in the past, particularly Poisonwood Bible... But a good friend recommended this one as beautifully written and I have to agree. The story is fascinating in itself, but Kingsolver's writing in this one is exquisite and I found myself pulled into the story, the family, and the wonder of what was happening on the mountain with the Monarch butterflies. It's really well done, with science interwoven into the story, and I could not put it down. Threads of global warming, threads of existence in a small town, woven with curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and personal growth. Highly recommended.
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- YB
- 04-05-19
Slow starter
Took a while to get fully hooked into the characters. I have like Ms Kingsolver's books so I knew to hang in there and it was worth it. I wish the story went a little longer into the Spring, some story lines were just amputated and bandaged.
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- Mimi
- 05-17-19
Story of monarch butterflies fascinating
I learned so much about the monarch butterflies that was very interesting. Did not like the characters at all. None except the little boy seemed real. Too much whining and complaining from the main character. She came across as a selfish, miserable person who was dissatisfied with her life who blamed everyone else for her problems. I only finished the book to see what happened to the butterflies.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-11-15
Well Written, But Too Firmly Women's Literature
I expected this to be an environmental tale, but it was more firmly the tale of how a small-town woman feels about children, men, family in general, and being "stuck" in a socioeconomic class she has never 100% identified with. Kingsolver spends a huge amount of time rehashing women's issues that have been beaten so hard for so long in Oprah's Book Club that the dead horse is only bones. The actual environmental theme is interesting, somewhat original, well thought out, and apropos. The writing is extremely high quality if you can slog through another explanation of why a woman is bored in her marriage and stuck in it due to bad teen decisions. All male characters are flat and only presented from the myopic perspectives of the semi stereotypical women. That said, the female characters are fairly well developed, if also commonplace. Overall, the book is an OK read, probably best left to women who strongly identify with semi-traditional female emotional perspectives. I'm betting that Flight Behavior was probably on Oprah's list nearly immediately.
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- Rebecca Douglas Lyman
- 03-27-14
Not as good as previous Barbara Kingsolver
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
Yes, it was interesting and good for a long trip.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
Global warming and it's impact. the cultural aspect is very interesting, though quite frustrating. Insight to much that is going on today and how isolated areas that are governed by fundamentalist churches, small, suspicious communities, poor access to outside information and lack of belief in science are affecting us all.
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
Yes.
Was Flight Behavior worth the listening time?
Yes
Any additional comments?
I was frustrated with this book. Though it would have been unrealistic to expect the changes I would have liked to see, the book stayed true to the area and culture it represented.
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- Elizabeth rydall
- 12-21-17
Flight or Flight
This book, like many of Kingsolver's, is interestingly about a topic that is mostly unknown. I always learn when reading her novels and I find the situations very intriguing. I decided no to fight my love of her writing and just go with it! No fight. Just Flight.
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- Laurness
- 09-29-17
Dance With the Future
Being a longtime fan of Ms. Kingsolver, I had little doubt that I would enjoy this book. However, I had no idea it would change my way of thinking. I wept at completion, even though I knew it had to be. What a journey! I feel like flying!
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