Accidentals
Author | Gaines, Susan M. |
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Year | 2020 |
First published | 2020 |
Publisher | Salt Lake City: Torrey House Press |
Number of pages | 344 |
Edition | First US trade paperback |
ISBN | 9781948814164 |
Keywords | ecology, microbiology, natural history, zoology, biology, biodiversity/extinction, climate change, habitat at risk, immigrant/emigrant scientists, postcolonial issues/setting, literary or mainstream, immigrant/emigrant scientist, female scientist, USA or Canada, Mexico & South America, FMS Library Book |
Abstract
When Gabriel’s mother decides to repatriate to her native Uruguay after
thirty years in California, he takes a break from his uninspiring desk
job to accompany her. A birdwatcher since childhood, Gabe is as
intrigued by the unfamiliar species in the wetlands on his squabbling
family’s ranch, as he is by crumbling, politics-obsessed Montevideo. But
when he falls in love with a local biologist, he is transformed from
observer to main character in his mother’s transnational saga. As Gabe
ventures more deeply into the marshes, the election ramps up, and his
mother’s family feuds escalate, he makes unexpected discoveries that force him to
contend with the environmental cataclysm of his turn-of-millennium
present—even as he confronts the Cold War era ideologies and political
violence that have shaped his family’s past and threaten his own future. Accidentals
is a
multicultural novel of loss and discovery that challenges our notions of
family and explores the ways that science, with all its uncertainties,
illuminates the natural world and our future. (Author)