Birdbrain

Think of it as a chronicle of the environmental movement circa late 1970's-80's through the eyes of an innocent but partying young country girl who has suppressed so much while waiting for her working class guy...It's 'accidentally' gazing at an eastern bluebird that causes the cracks in the thin veneer of her life, finally jolting her out of a marriage-induced lobotomy to the realization that the world doesn't end at her skin.

Life bashes her around a bit which releases her intellectual tendencies, pissing off her rural friends. "Drink another beer! Enjoy the barbecue! Lighten up!" The more she becomes interested in nature, political causes, talks about college, and adventuring out of the womb of rural Michigan, the more maligned she feels by her friends, particularly Patty--her life-long best friend.

Will their friendship survive all the changes? She leaves her home town on a kind of subconscious pilgrimage to heal (herself) but the feeling of alienation does not abate.

Of course, for those of us who love the land of our country, at some point, like Ellie, we dare to question the tendency of the human species to bulldoze over its own planet and there was a lot of it going on during this time.

Ellie is further transformed as she dives deeper into the world of ecology then she meets who she could become, in Kate...and nobody likes Kate all that much.

Kate is always pissed off. Adding to the turmoil are geologic sized personal losses she has little idea how to deal with.

So what does every torn soul do? Takes to the road which makes for a very 'bio-diverse' set of experiences, from roaming spirits in the desert, gnatcatchers in California, accidental crusades against development, ascending tufas at Mono Lake, to dancing cowboys and hoodoos in Wyoming, not to mention those sympathetic truckers on Interstate-80.

Birds and ecological science are woven throughout the novel (so you may just learn something).

The novel is based on real-world experiences of the author who has been a professional field biologist for over 20 years.

Virginia grew up in the mid-west and of course, did the road trip west where she stayed (of course).