Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

ACCIDENTALS

Susan Gaines

A literary novel of science, nature, and family relationships. A story of migration and homecoming, as an ornithologist follows his mother in her "reverse migration" after 30 years in the U.S. home to South America.

Gabriel Quiroga agrees to accompany his mother Liliana to Uruguay, just long enough to get her settled and do a little birdwatching. But the landscape and its vibrant birdlife beguiles him, particularly a pretty local specimen named Alejandra. She is a biologist studying the wetlands that surround Liliana's would-be farm.

Gabriel and Alejandra advance deeper into their relationship, and into the ranch's virgin marsh, where they discover an undocumented species of water bird with a habitat at risk. Then, a revelation about Gabe's mother Liliana throws all that he has known into confusion. A dramatic reckoning between the past and the future becomes unavoidable.

Susan Gaines did doctoral research in chemistry and oceanography before turning to creative writing. She directs the international research and fellowship program "Fiction Meets Science" at the University of Bremen. The author of academic studies, she has published books, essays and literary stories.

Available products
Book Published by Torrey House
Book Published by Torrey House

Comments

As a conservation biologist, a Uruguayan, and a mother of two first-generation Americans, I am grateful for the history and idiosyncrasy captured in Accidentals, and . [its] potent mix of . power fights, secrets, conservation, and evolution.

A captivating novel centered around love lost, regained, and fashioned anew, a mix of cultures, and efforts to reclaim land and heritage. All this against a backdrop of discovering and recording the lives of birds in the wild with forces human- and climate-driven pressing on their survival. Deeply moving and powerful.

This is a book about all the things we don't yet know; all the things we know but keep hidden; and all the things we once knew but have lost. Gorgeous, smart, and surprising, Gaines' family saga takes us into the large world of nations and politics, but also the microscopic world of mud and microbes. Tender and powerful.

Gaines' novel is deeply researched, and the reader will walk away with an understanding of not only Uruguay's repressive regimes, but also biomes, bird preservation, and more.

intricate and informative . Accidentals is a rich portrait of a country and its people, relayed with detail and wonder thanks to a naturalist's eye

In clean, beautiful prose and with an environmental sensibility evocative of Stegner, Accidentals sings with the vibrancy of the living world. It is a novel both erudite and emotionally compelling, suffused with science and natural history, and one which places Gaines firmly in the company of Richard Powers, Barbara Kingsolver, and Anthony Doerr.

ACCIDENTALS is an intimate family story with an astonishingly epic scope. Alive with history, politics, science, romance, and birds, it is as entertaining as it is intelligent, as beautiful as it is wise.

The personal is political: if anybody has ever wondered what this insight means then I recommend Accidentals as an enchanting path toward understanding. This novel of a young man's transformation, from passive observation to passionate engagement masterfully encompasses so many levels, from the biology of microbes to the chaos of politics and the mysteries of the human heart, with every level rendered fascinating by the author's extraordinary powers of observation. This is a novel that is, above all, about how seeing is an act of love. A profound and moving experience awaits the reader.