“The animals are dying. Soon we will be alone here.”—the first sentence in the book.

Some books are hard to let go. They stick with you for a long time. Such is the case with Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. On one hand, it is hard to put down; the reader follows the clues in search of why and how the protagonist came to be the person she is. On the other, the backdrop, the near (very near) future is so painstakingly sad that if you are a human being you will cry.

Life moves along much as it does right now. However, there are no wolves, no polar bears. There are very few fish in the sea and bird populations are swiftly dying off. I read this book weeks ago and I have not been able to shake it. Imagine; can you? No wolves left in the world. No polar bears. Is this the direction we are headed? For real?

Not only are the fish disappearing, but a way of life is going with it. Fishermen hang on to all they know with every fiber of their being. They don’t want another kind of job. They want to go to sea. They want to fish. To this they have devoted their lives and their livelihood and even sacrificed time with their families.

Just today, I read a news article stating that Whole Foods will stop selling salmon. The salmon they are getting are not large enough to sell. The salmon themselves are smaller, but the schools of salmon are also shrinking. At our house, we eat a lot of salmon. Fiction and reality often collide. I am afraid (terribly afraid) because I know that this fiction is based on fact.

Franny Stone is a lost soul with a complicated past. The book follows her as she follows the last migration of Artic Terns that travel from Greenland to Antarctica every year.  She hitches a ride on a fishing vessel, convincing the captain that if he will take her on and follow the birds, the birds will lead him to fish. They make an odd pair to be sure. The one fighting to preserve his vocation, the other as an environmentalist despising what he does, they find common ground in the personal.

As she travels, Franny misses her husband. She carries a deep hurt and guilt that is only revealed at the end of the book. The story flows back and forth through time, slowly revealing Franny’s past. Really, she is just one among an entire planet of people struggling to survive at the end of the world. In Migrations, what happens to the environment has a very real and very personal impact on everyone.

• Migrations
• By Charlotte McConaghy
• Flatiron Books
• 978-1-250-2040-28
• 2020