This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
The Images Struck a Chord
by Julie Sellers
Hello Radio Readers. I’m Julie A. Sellers for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl is a memoir that is part meditation on life, death, and grief, and part collection of vignettes about the author’s family and home.
Late Migrations includes reflections on the natural world, drawing parallels to a variety of aspects of the human experience. Likewise, Renkl shares memories from her own life, beginning with her childhood in Alabama, and anecdotes shared by her relatives. Each chapter is short, succinct, and poignant, and the beautiful illustrations by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl are masterfully done.
Renkl is in touch with the natural world surrounding her home and all the flora and fauna that inhabit it. She is a birdwatcher and feeder, she places boxes for nesting, and she purposefully selects plants and flowers to attract butterflies and pollinators, even stocking her garden with Monarch butterflies. Renkl’s interaction with the natural world is a constant example of our interconnectedness with it.
One of the images that reappears in the book is that of the nest. In fact, one chapter is entitled “Nests.” In it, an accumulation of images of nests ravaged by predators gives way to images of those nests that have survived. Renkl’s memories of her own and her family’s moves to different houses and cities, and her grief at the loss of her parents, grandparents, and in-laws parallels the image of the nest as a center of identity, one that can be and often is disrupted. Still, life continues, issuing forth from the nest.
As a nature lover, I was drawn in by Renkl’s imagery. I was able to see the Eastern Colorado sky she describes in my mind’s eye, having known similar “Prairie Lights” in Kansas. She writes, “And, oh, the stars were like the stars in a fairy tale, a profligate pouring of stars that reached across the sky from the edge of the world to the edge of the world to the edge of the world.”
The chapter entitled “Creek Walk” reminded me of the hours I spent during my own childhood swimming and exploring along the creek on the family farm where I was raised. The images and senses she evokes as she remembers the creek struck a chord with me. She writes, “These are our sighs and our sounds and our smells, as casual to us as the smell of our own breath in our cupped hands.”
Renkl’s grief is profound, and yet, she expresses it with the soft touch of a fallen feather or a glint of sunshine.When her mother passes unexpectantly, she discovers that the natural world continues: “And that’s how I learned the world would go on. An irreplaceable life had winked out in an instant, but outside my window the world was flaring up in celebration.”Renkl’s memoir, then, is a beautiful reminder that movement and change are part of life’s ebb and flow.
I’m Julie A. Sellers for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
