“With a birder’s eye for detail, White takes us on [Adrian Mandrick’s] painful, near death descent…[her] life-affirming conclusion reminds us that endangered species aren’t the only ones that need to change and adapt in order to survive.”—The New York Times Book Review
H Is for Hawk meets Grief Is the Thing with Feathers in this evocative debut novel about a pill-popping anesthesiologist and avid birder who embarks on a quest to find one of the world’s rarest species, allowing nothing to get in his way—until he’s forced to confront his obsessions and what they’ve cost him.
Adrian Mandrick seems to have his life in perfect order with an excellent job in a Colorado hospital, a wife and two young children he loves deeply, and a serious passion for birding. His life list comprises 863 species correctly identified and cataloged—it is, in fact, the third longest list in the North American region.
But Adrian holds dark secrets about his childhood—secrets that threaten to consume him after he’s contacted by his estranged mother, and subsequently relapses into an addiction to painkillers. In the midst of his downward spiral, the legendary birder with the region’s second-longest life list dies suddenly, and Adrian receives an anonymous tip that could propel him to the very top: the extremely rare Ivory-billed Woodpecker, spotted deep in the swamplands of Florida’s Panhandle.
Combining sharp, elegant prose with environmental adventure, The Life List of Adrian Mandrick is a poignant, engaging story that heralds the arrival of a new literary talent.
“With a birder’s eye for detail, White takes us on [Adrian Mandrick’s] painful, near death descent… [her] life-affirming conclusion reminds us that endangered species aren’t the only ones that need to change and adapt in order to survive.”—The New York Times Book Review
"Beautiful and fascinating...The Life List of Adrian Mandrick is a riveting and heart-rending book about birds, love, and the fleeting unknown.” – Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus
"The Life List of Adrian Mandrick is a poignant story of a man whose epic search for glory forces him to face his own human failures, all set against the backdrop of a stunning, natural world that there’s still time to save."—Courtney Maum, author of Touch and I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You
"An immensely affecting observation of human nature and foibles.”—Chicago Review of Books
