Accidentals

Author Gaines, Susan M.
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)