She enlists the crew of a fishing boat to carry her on this voyage. Franny tracks the birds, both to help her husband (a professor and advocate for the few surviving animal species) carry out his work and to continue her own flight from long-borne guilt. Much of the novel focuses on what is expected to be the final flight of the Arctic tern, of which only three are believed to survive. She is also talented at fleeing painful situations. It would do a disservice to the reader to reveal too much, but suffice to say, Franny is well-schooled in horrific injuries inflicted by loved ones and in revisiting these injuries on herself. McConaghy instead uses this catastrophe as the backdrop for the troubles and failings of her protagonist, Franny.įranny is a woman haunted by her troubled past and that of her family. The fate of nature and humanity is not the point of the story, however. Humans have done all of this with little regret or remorse.

Animals needed for food, such as fish, are kept in commercial captivity. Those not exterminated have simply lost their habitats to our need for ever-expanding space, although we’ve kept a few animals in “sanctuaries” to convince ourselves we haven’t committed mass slaughter. Her world is one in which humans have rendered nearly all wild animals extinct, hunting prey large and small until few remain. ( From the publisher.Charlotte McConaghy’s powerful new novel, Migrations, introduces us to a future marked by ecological collapse and mass extinction. Propelled by a narrator as fierce and fragile as the terns she is following, Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations is both an ode to our threatened world and a breathtaking page-turner about the lengths we will go for the people we love. When her quest threatens the safety of the entire crew, Franny must ask herself what she is really running toward-and running from. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of unsent letters, and obsessed with pursuing the terns at any cost, Franny is full of secrets. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his eccentric crew with promises that the birds will lead them to fish.Īs the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s dark history begins to unspool. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and track their final migration. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life.īut when the wild she loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. A novel set on the brink of catastrophe, as a young woman chases the world’s last birds-and her own final chance for redemption.įranny Stone has always been a wanderer.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy