Margaret Renkl weaves personal and natural history in ‘Late Migrations’

There must have come a moment, somewhere during the writing of “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss,” in which Margaret Renkl was asked to describe her work-in-progress. And I would like to have been there when she did, to see the doubt and bafflement torque the listener’s face. For how can any brief description capture this entirely original and deeply satisfying book? I’ve read it twice now, with deepening wonder, so I’ll try.

The 112 short-form nonfiction pieces collected in “Late Migrations” vary in length from a paragraph to a few pages. More than a dozen illustrations by artist Billy Renkl, the author’s brother, are scattered among them. The opening, “In Which My Grandmother Tells the Story of My Mother’s Birth,” is set in “Lower Alabama, 1931” and rendered as if spoken by the grandmother. The book’s subsequent piece — Renkl’s description of her efforts to entice bluebirds to her garden — seems unrelated. This pattern continues throughout the book: place-based narratives about Renkl’s family that move forward chronologically, alternating with her idiosyncratic backyard-naturalist meditations.

How can these threads possibly be woven? Ah, that’s the surprise and accomplishment. Individually, the pieces are polished jewels, and indeed 10 of them have been published in The New York Times, where Renkl is a contributing opinion writer. (She’s also the former editor of Chapter 16.) But the discrete pieces gain depth and resonance from accrual. The parents on the Alabama peanut farm are the same ones who comfort homesick Renkl when she drops out of her ill-fitting grad program in the urban North, and they’re the same ones who later switch roles with Renkl as she becomes their caregiver.

‘Late Migrations’