Customer Reviews

In Hovering Flight

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I turned to this novel because I've always loved birds. And the story of these people who, like me, appreciate birds and the natural world moved me for that reason. But, even more, this novel touched me deeply, even made me cry over and over, because of the way it depicts both the deep beauty of human relationships and the losses that are involved in loving deeply. I started to read the book early one Sunday, and couldn't put it down, read it right through the day until 1 a.m. And now I've loaned it to a good friend, but I can't wait until she gives it back, because I want to read it again, to immerse myself in it once more. It's not often that I wish to re-read a book I've just finished. I recommend the book highly."

This book is a gentle look at the many forms of passion-- for a cause, a friendship, a lover, a spouse, a child, a way of life--and how they can come full circle in the course of a life. The main theme is environmentalism, but so many different stories and years are woven into it that its tapestry is almost too rich to describe. This is Hinnefeld's
debut novel--it's clearly the start of what will be a brilliant career for her.

I found In Hovering Flight to be thought provoking and stirring. I started reading it and couldn't put it down until I finished it. It begins with a daughter coming home to say goodbye to her mother dying of cancer. Addie, the mother, a famous bird artist and environmental activist, is surrounded by her best friends from college, Cora & Lou, and her dear husband, Tom. In saying goodbye, we are whisked off to the beginning of Addie and Toms humble beginnings as student and college professor, lovers who are passionate about the natural world around them. We learn of a complicated life, of the strength of friendship and the agony of betrayal and how the sum of everything draws everyone back to Addie in the end. With the gentle remembrances of the people most important to Addie, Addies daughter Scarlet gains a better understanding of her mother and who she really was. On the surface it is a love story of Addie, & Tom. But just below it is a beautifully written story of the nature that surrounds us and the gifts that it can give us if we just stand still for a moment and take it all in.... listen to the song of the birds... feel the crush of the grass underneath our feet... Watch the soar of a hawk... and how life is precious for all of nature and we should try and appreciate it all while we can.

Bird lovers will appreciate the poetic voice Joyce Hinnefeld lends to the descriptions of the patient wait in the woods to see a scarlet tanger, a wood thrush or a beautiful cardinal, and the mysterious deciphering of a bird song heard in the distance. I've actually gone to Cape May birding during fall migration and this story captures the wonder of it all...

It's a beautifully written story. One that you may find yourself reading passages from again just to revisit the beauty of nature....

I was privileged to receive a review copy of this from the publisher to share my opinion with my readers of my blog, Chick with Books.

I had a lot of questions about this book when I finished it. To say that the queries are more along the lines of -- how do our passions change, and why?, or what does friendship mean when others' interests expand? -- shows just how deftly Hinnefeld crafts this story for readers willing to tackle such an underrated book. This ultimately is a deeply moving work about how quiet lives unfold, in both beauty and decay.

In Hovering Flight , opens in 2002 with Addie Kavanaugh, of Pennsylvania, dying of breast cancer at the home of a friend on the New Jersey shore. She is surrounded by family and friends and has made an strange last request for her remains: an illegal burial. When she dies her body is carried by loved ones to a walk-in in cooler at a seafood restaurant. (After that happened it thought this story might be a little far out for my tastes). I continued to read, and I was pleasantly surprised.

The story then takes the reader back in time to tell the story of how when Addie was a college art student, she fell in love with birds and with her biology professor, Tom Kavanaugh. Through Addie's field guide journal entries she documents her college girl crush with Tom, who returns her affections, eventually divorces his wife and the two marry. The early years of marriage follows their birding passion, and Addie's involvement in political and environmental activism. When their daughter Scarlet is born, (named after a bird - Scarlet Tanager), Addie's passion for the outdoors, birding and painting, continues often with young Scarlet at her side trying to imitate her Hippie mother.

When Scarlet returns home as her mother is dying we learn more about the mother-daughter relationship. Scarlet had always felt she took a backseat to her mom's aviary passion, and she is determined to find out more about why the environment and activism meant so much to her mother. This book is not so much about Addie's death, but really about her life and her passions. It's a story about relationships, conflicts, nature and love. A beautiful family drama, that will make you as the reader understand Addie's strange last request, and make it seem not so strange after all.

Hinnefeld begins her elegant debut novel with a seemingly simple line: "According to John James Audubon, there was once a species of bird in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Cuvier's kinglet, Regulus cuvieri, or, as Audubon liked to call it, Cuvier's wren." This sentence hints at the story about to unfold, for Addie Sturmer Kavanaugh, the illustrator of a book on birds and the wife of a respected ornithologist, claims to have seen a Cuvier's kinglet, a bird that only one person, Audubon, has claimed to have seen. That her husband Tom, a respected ornithologist, never contradicts her speaks volumes about their relationship. However, that little bird - either extinct or imagined - serves as a metaphor for Addie, a passionate woman who exists, perhaps, where she should not: in a world that doesn't take her seriously.

The novel opens on the day Addie has passed away from breast cancer, with daughter Scarlet, husband Tom, and dear friends Cora and Lou in attendance. Told through Addie's field journals and multiple points-of-view, In Hovering Flight portrays the evolution of an earnest college student into a protest artist and activist, through the stages of love, motherhood, and friendship that define her. Because Hinnefeld often uses indirect characterization, through the experiences and reactions of the other characters, Addie remains somewhat unknowable, even by the end, contributing to the central mystery of the novel: Who was Addie, and why did she choose the paths she did?

The best novels offer wisdom, even if it is a quiet truth, and this novel does not disappoint. In Hovering Flight is a celebration of birds, love, and art. I highly recommend this book to readers of literary and women's fiction. Its hauntingly beautiful story will stay with you long after you have finished the last sentence.

-- Debbie Lee Wesselmann

Hinnefeld's subtle weaving of personal and public in a first novel make her a wonderful discovery for this author, and for fans of Ann Tyler, Carrie Brown, and Ann Patchett.
Grounded with journal entries from Addie Sturmer Kavanaugh's birding field notebooks from 1965 to 2002, Hinnefeld draws us into the emotional complexities of Scarlet Kavanaugh's world: her mother's early marriage to a college ornithology professor and Scarlet's own search for her identity in the face of her parents' obsessions and her mother's cancer. As Addie's environmental activism widens the distance with her husband and daughter, Hinnefeld's quiet examination of motivation and intent transforms a love story into much more. So believable is the sense of Scarlet's discovery of her mother's real character and feelings that by the final burial of Addie, you feel a personal sense of forgiveness and understanding of every mother's struggle for balance between parenthood and work.
My complete review of this book is on www.ijustfinished.com.

Renowned aviary and overall environmental artist Addie Sturmer Kavanagh is dying from cancer. She makes a final death wish to "clear orders for a brazenly illegal burial". Meanwhile her thirtyish years old daughter Scarlet comes home not to just to bury her mom, but to finally understand her mom. Even her death request is so Addie, weird to anyone except perhaps the inner sanctum.

Addie was just another bored art major when she fell in love with Professor Tom Kavanagh and his passion for birds. They became a formidable entry in the environmental activist movements and antiwar protests. Some time after Scarlet is born, Addie changed from gung ho bird lover to outraged political warrior. Her tormented switch left Scarlet and to a degree Tom behind; now Scarlet needs to know from Addie's beloved friends Cora and Lou why to include a special funeral at the Jersey shore instead of her Pennsylvania home.

The key to this terrific character study is the seemingly dysfunctional relationship between mother and daughter. Scarlet has felt neglected by her mom all her life; in fact she believes the search for proof that the Cuvier's Knight is an extinct aviary species superseded her needs. Still IN HOVERING FLIGHT pattern, Scarlet wants to soar like her mom did, but before she can use her wings she needs to know why in her opinion the environment and birds meant more to Addie than her daughter ever did. This is a superb relationship drama.

Harriet Klausner

This novel is an unmitigated pleasure that is sure to gratify readers who appreciate stunning but unpretentious prose, sophisticated storytelling and characters you can care about. Before entering its world I feared the novel might be an oversensitive family novel for women only, or a plea for saving rare avian species. Such fears were totally unfounded.

What did I love most about In Hovering Flight? Tough to choose between the warm almost homespun prose; the fascinating structure with time and viewpoint constantly shifting and enriching; and the astute examination of relationships, between spouses, between parent and child, and between women friends.

What was most surprising? That Addie's environmentalism was not posited as an ideal, that her activism overreached into extremism.

What did the novel remind me of? The portrayal of self-absorbed artists and how they create; the evolving perceptions of a child as a critic of its parents; the offhand burlesque of Addie's burial; and the smooth, comforting transparency of the prose style recalled for me the novels of . . . John Irving!

To me Scarlet--the 30something daughter of Tom and Addie Kavanaugh--is the stealth protagonist of the book, the one who hovers, then lands at the center. Her name and the course of her life embody the passions and values of her parents and her coming to terms with her heritage is the most beautiful drama that unfolds.

In Hovering Flight holds countless pleasures for readers who value literary quality and a storyline that is both subtle and more emotionally rewarding. It deserves all the kudos it has received and will receive from critics and readers.

In what is nominally a mother-daughter drama, scenes of the past played out against the recent death of Addie Kavanaugh, an ornithologist and artist as is her professor husband, Tom, the author attempts to elucidate, in the most subtle manner, the heady seduction of untrammeled creativity, in this case, the study of birds that animates Addie's entire life as well as that of her spouse. At a small Pennsylvania college, Addie absorbs the pleasures of Tom's class, his poetic tendencies in the study or ornithology and his devotion to this unique and diverse species. Drawn to one another in spite of his yet-to-be-dissolved marriage, Addie and Tom create something of a scandal at this college in the late 1960s, Addie evidencing a lifelong disregard for the opinions of others. Their universe defined by devotion to their specialty, Addie and Tom enjoy a rarified existence, although the real time problems of a degrading environment and unpopular war eventually intrude.

The tale begins immediately after Addie's second bout with cancer and her death after refusing traditional treatment. At the home of best friend, Cora, Addie draws her last breath, surrounded by her loved ones, Tom, her daughter, Scarlet, Cora and the third member of an unbreakable trio, Lou. Never conventional, Addie has requested an unusual solution for her remains, perhaps illegal, the family sorting through the inevitable complications of fulfilling her wishes. Grieving, Scarlet listens as Cora, Lou and Tom reminisce, searching for answers about an enigmatic mother whose early enthusiasm for her chosen career is later sidetracked by the despoiling of the environment, her embrace of lively winged creatures turned to obsession with the dead and dying birds that reflect a poisoned land. It is this complex, inscrutable mother with whom Scarlet seeks finally to make her peace.

While Hinnefeld's prose attempts to soar above the petty dramas of marriage, family, career and society's abominable environmental failures, the curious, inspired Addie of the first part of the novel is, by the end, an embittered, intractable and tedious Janie-one-note. Her response to the unfairness of life is shrill and angry, her art focused on dead birds at the same time she battles cancer. Tom's constant adoration and Scarlet's ambivalence about her mother cannot rise above the image of a talented woman grown cynical and disappointed. In spite of the love affair between these two east coast ornithologists, there is a palpable lack of passion, the author failing to garner even my reluctant sympathy for these characters, Addie, Tom and Scarlet as remote as the campus where Tom teaches. Weighed down by time and circumstance, Addie remains tethered to the earth. Luan Gaines/2008.