THE LIFE LIST OF ADRIAN MANDRICK

In this evocative debut novel, a pill-popping anesthesiologist and avid birder embarks on a quest to spot the extremely rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker, allowing nothing to get in his way—not his wife's growing concerns, not his children pulling away, not even his own dark family history that's dredged back up when tragedy strikes—until he's forced to confront his obsessions and what they've cost him.

Anesthesiologist Adrian Mandrick is filled with contradictory impulses. He wants to be a good husband to his wife, a good father to his children, to forgive the crime his once-beloved mother committed and the long lost father who accused her. But when a call from his mother after years of silence sends him back into a downward spiral of addiction (he abuses the very pain medication he prescribes), the pills get in the way.
And all he wants to think about, anyway, is his "life list"—that all-encompassing record of the 861 bird species he’s spotted and verified. His is the third longest list in all of North America.

When Henry Lassiter, the legendary birder who held the region's second longest life list, dies suddenly, Adrian seizest he opportunity to make his way to the very top. A search for the extremely rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker—the same bird he and his mother thought they spotted in the fondest memory from his childhood—eventually leaves him stranded in the thick swamplands of Florida’s panhandle, where he is forced to confront his tumultuous past and his present failures, to take stock of what his obsessions and addictions have cost him, and to question what is truly important in his life.

The Life List of Adrian Mandrick fuses wry humor and family drama with elements of mystery and environmental adventure, creating a resonant introduction to a new literary talent.


Chris White is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, with an MFA in dramatic writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her plays have been produced nationally and internationally. Recently, her screenplay, Weasel in the Icebox (two-time finalist at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab), won an Award of Merit at the Women’s Independent Film Festival in LA, and her short film, Mud Lotus, was an official selection for the New Hampshire, Albany, and Cincinnati Film Festivals. White is a tenured faculty member at De Pauw University teaching creative writing. She lives with her husband near the town of Bainbridge, Indiana, on a wide creek. The Life List of Adrian Mandrick is her
first novel.