Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly - Softcover

Halpern, Sue

3.83

322 ratings by Goodreads

9780753813362: Four Wings and a Prayer: Caught in the Mystery of the Monarch Butterfly

Softcover

ISBN 10: 075381336X ISBN 13: 9780753813362

Publisher: Phoenix, 2002

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The Monarch butterfly is the only creature to migrate like a bird. It flies north to south at altitudes of 3,000 feet, dodging aeroplanes and predators. Scientists have been tracking this enigmatic creature and its journey for years; its wintering site in Mexico was only discovered twenty years ago. FOUR WINGS AND A PRAYER tells of the quest to trace the Monarch migration, which began in 1952 when two entomologists and 4,000 volunteers tagged hundreds of butterflies. Halpern weaves the stories of these volunteers into her narrative. One, a secretary, gave up her job when a Monarch landed on her desk, and became grand marshall of a butterfly parade. Another lives out of his truck for three months when the butterflies pass through his state in order to follow them. This elegantly written book combines these personal stories with a scientific examination of the Monarch, and its extraordinary journey across a continent.

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Review:

Sue Halpern, author of Four Wings and a Prayer and a gifted student of the natural world, has a knowing passion for butterflies--"not love, exactly, offered suddenly, but a similar quickening of heart and desire tugging on my imagination as if it were a loose sleeve."

In this book, that passion takes flight in quest of the monarch, a species of butterfly suddenly much in the news. In the company of freelance biologist Bill Calvert, ecologist Homero Aridjis, and other scientists and activists, Halpern travels into the highlands of Michoacan, Mexico, to which monarchs born east of the Rocky Mountains migrate each autumn, flying as much as 200 miles a day to get there before the onset of the highland winter. There she ponders the complexities of the monarch's life--after all, she writes, "how did the monarch butterflies from the eastern United States and Canada, millions of them, end up every year in the same unlikely spot, a remote and largely inhospitable 50 acres of oyamelis pine forest?"--and the unfortunate events that have felled monarchs by the untold millions in recent years, including the destruction of habitat and climate change.

Halpern's enthusiasm for Lepidoptera is catching, and her graceful advocacy of the monarch should inspire renewed concern for their wellbeing in the world. --Gregory McNamee

Book Description:

A beautifully written book exploring the fascination which surrounds the Monarch butterfly and its incredible migratory journey across America.

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