A 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Project Grantee
"A rich portrait of a country and its people, relayed with detail and wonder, thanks to a naturalist's eye."
—FOREWORD REVIEWS
When Gabriel’s mother decides to repatriate to her native Uruguay after thirty years in California, he takes a break from his uninspiring desk job to accompany her. At first, Gabe observes his mother’s squabbling family in the same detached way he watches the new species of birds he encounters in the marsh on their neglected land—but when he falls in love with a local biologist, he is suddenly transformed from observer to the main character in his family’s transnational saga. As Gabe and Alejandra struggle to confront the environmental devastation of their twenty-first-century future, they find themselves mired in the mud of their parents'—and their countries'—Cold War–era past.
