The Economy of Sparrows, Trevor Herriot
The Economy of Sparrows, Trevor Herriot
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The Economy of Sparrows

Author: Trevor Herriot

Narrator: Kelley Jo Burke

Unabridged: 5 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/07/2023


Synopsis

A debut novel about the heartbreak of habitat loss and family trauma by one of Canada’s most beloved writer-naturalists. This debut novel by Trevor Herriot is the richly observed story of Nell Rowan, who has inherited her family’s prairie farmstead and returned there to live after many decades away. Nell is increasingly obsessed by a 19th-century bird collector while haunted by memories of her mother’s disappearance. Nell’s fascination with 19th-century bird collector William Spreadborough began during her janitorial night shifts at the National Museum of Nature. Now retired and back home on the same prairie where Spreadborough collected birds, her obsession with his life and death becomes more urgent. Though she finds consolation in the company of her border collie and horses, and the wild birds passing through each season, Nell feels increasingly isolated. Her neighbours seem indifferent to the ongoing devastation contemporary agriculture wreaks on prairie ecosystems and less than supportive of Nell’s attempts to track native bird populations. And now she is unable to escape the central mystery of her life: what happened to her mother in that long-ago snowstorm? Things begin to shift for Nell when she provides temporary shelter to Carmelita, a fifteen-year-old foster child whose fresh view of the world around her just might rescue Nell from the hopelessness she fears is her inheritance. Trevor Herriot’s The Economy of Sparrows connects today’s settler culture and natural science to their roots in colonial empire-building. As Nell Rowan finds the people who might help her come to some peaceful resolution of her life’s challenges, readers are faced with questions of how we engage with and value the natural world, how its truths illuminate both history and our present lives, and how we justify ourselves to the wild things of the earth.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Melanie on November 06, 2023

Love books written by people with a biology background.......more

Goodreads review by Calvin on September 14, 2023

A 3.5 -- Would have been 4 but the ending didn't seem to tie things up for me......more

Goodreads review by Donna on January 26, 2024

Tying the past colonial perspective to the present through a woman’s obsession with a nineteenth century naturalist and bird collector. Love the quote for each chapter from Tavener’s book which describes a bird species and describes their economic value. So much knowledge, so arcane, so erudite, so......more

Goodreads review by Jonathon on December 13, 2023

A charming read from cover to cover. Trevor’s love for natural history and the natural world really shines through in this beautiful story.......more

Goodreads review by Russell on October 16, 2023

Conscience and reconciliation with the past With the economy of sparrows pitted against humans’ interest in agriculture, Trevor Herriot’s _The Economy of Sparrows_ is a rare book that is at once a novel about environment, species endangerment and colonial methods of bird research as well as a sophis......more