Restless woman goes on journey of self-discovery
“Migrations” is the American debut novel from the Australian author Charlotte Mcconaghy. Before this, she has written mostly young adult stories.
Franny Stone is our main character and narrates the stor y of her life as we tr y to get to know her, and in my case decide if I even like her! She describes herself as a wanderer, like her mother before her. Franny has always felt that there is something inside her that has to stay wild! This manifests in her as an inability to stay in any one place permanently. She has always felt in tune with the ocean’s tides and the birds that soar above. Franny feels that she needs to follow these; however, these are disappearing so she must find a destination to go to, to have a purpose, and she finds it: To follow the migration of the last flock of Arctic terns, a little bird with the longest migration pattern of all the birds. It flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic to mate and flies back to lay their eggs and raise the hatchlings, until it is time to do it again!
When we meet Franny, she is in the process of catching and tagging these little birds. She has older equipment and the tagging and tracking is all on her. She does not have any grants to fund her quest or school or group footing the bill. Once the birds are tagged, Franny faces the task of finding a fishing ship that will agree to take her to follow them on their migration. There are not ver y many licensed fishing boats around anymore, much less one willing to take on a hand that has never crewed on a ship before.
Just as the birds are going extinct at an alarming rate, so too are the creatures in the seas, that include the fish. The Arctic tern eats the smaller fish disturbed and pushed to the sur face as the larger school’s of fish move through.
Franny meets her husband, Niall, after she sits in on his class lecture at the college where she works. Due to her thirst for knowledge, Niall tries to get her to actually enter college and to take his class. However, what he does not know is how little formal education she has had. Their shared passion for birds and their survival brings them together, even though they have very different backgrounds.
The thing in Franny’s subconscious that she calls the wild causes her to sleepwalk. While she is out walking, there are times she does things that can harm her or others. Even though she doesn’t remember what happens while she is asleep, when she awakens she finds that her feet will have mud on them, or she is wet from tr ying to swim, so she takes to sleeping with her wrist bound to her bed.
For much of the book Franny is looking for her parents. Her father left before she was a year old and her mother when she was eight. Niall helps her with research into where they are; finding them for her and helping to put those puzzle pieces together.
Slowly as other puzzle pieces are revealed we see some of what has been broken in Franny. Things start to come together as a whole, which allows her to finally move for ward in her life. By the end of the book the puzzle of her life is shown in completion and she is refocused on a new goal.
After a rough start I came to admire Franny for her toughness and her determination that was always a part of her. While “Migrations” isn’t my typical type of book, I ended up enjoying it and can honestly say I would recommend it!
Dorothy Schreyer is a Library Associate at Sterling Public Library.