Book Blurb:
Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no longer wander without a destination. She arrives in remote Greenland with one purpose: to find the world’s last flock of Arctic terns and follow them on their final migration. She convinces Ennis Malone, captain of the Saghani, to take her onboard, winning over his salty, eccentric crew with promises that the birds she is tracking will lead them to fish.
As the Saghani fights its way south, Franny’s new shipmates begin to realize that the beguiling scientist in their midst is not who she seems. Battered by night terrors, accumulating a pile of letters to her husband, and dead set on following the terns at any cost, Franny is full of dark secrets. When the story of her past begins to unspool, Ennis and his crew must ask themselves what Franny is really running toward—and running from.
My Review: 4.5 stars
Migrations is a reader’s read, a literary accomplishment. The story mirrors exactly as the title states. The last migration of the last living birds sometime in the future. The book takes place in a time when all animals have become extinct, with only a few fish left in the oceans and a flock of little birds called Terns. It was the protagonist’s goal to follow the terns on their final migration across the globe.
Franny is an incredibly unreliable character, a wanderer and cannot stay in one place for too long. It is through letters to her husband that we begin to crack open her vault of secrets. There is a lot of heartbreak, love and loss that have changed her as a person. Her and her husband’s love story is fast and deep. They both had an undying love for nature, oceans and birds. They thrived on it. As a gift to her husband, she will follow the terns to see that they arrive safely to their last migration in Antarctica.
After swindling her way onto a fishing vessel, she encounters her crewmates, who at first seem like a bawdy group of fishermen, yet each have incredible backstories that were important to the story. Although this book isn’t a book you’ll fly through, the language and thought processes of Franny are incredible. The scenes on the rough sea makes the popular show, The Deadliest Catch, come to life.
This book is an ode to the written word, climate change and the study of birds.
Quotes I liked:
The sky is the sky is a sky, and yet here, somehow, it’s more. It’s bigger”.
“Just as we have been steadily killing off the animals of land and sky, the fishermen have fished the sea almost to extinction.”
“According to Mam, inside the pages of a novel lived the only beauty offered up by the world.”
“But the rhythms of the sea’s tides are the only things we humans have not yet destroyed.”
“…we loved each other with brands to our names and bodies and souls.”
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