Overview

Three lives are drawn together by fate, flight, and the healing power of nature. Ava Estmund has everything under control. She is a rising star in the world of ornithology, a respected professor, and comfortably in love with a fellow academic. But when her father and star student both die on the same day, Ava abandons everything and everyone she knows and retreats to her uncle's birding casa in Ecuador. Eleven-year-old Greer Groff is on the run in the wilderness of western Idaho. The only witness to an act of shocking violence, she must survive on her own using her wits, imagination, and only a dog and two llamas for company. Ezra Kittredge is determined to escape the shadow of his felony conviction. He may have served his time, but he's done waiting for freedom. He jumps parole on a container ship bound for Central America, willing to leave everything behind to escape a future defined by his past. Subtly suffused with myth and woven together by ravens, The Origin of Ava is a timeless and timely reminder that however hard we try to break with the past, we may just be setting up a collision course with our truest selves.

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9798890920201

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Reviews

""The Origin of Ava is a captivating exploration of loss and renewal. Annie Lampman weaves unforgettable characters into a poignant narrative that beautifully celebrates the incredible resilience of the human spirit."" --CHELSIA RICE, Montana Book Company ""The Origin of Ava is an urgent and passionate portrait of the northern Idaho wilderness, its birdlife, and three of its human inhabitants, whose damaged lives intersect, revealing the redemptive power of nature, time, and chosen family."" --CAROL PRICE, BookPeople of Moscow ""With a forest fire at our backs, Lampman's masterful storytelling compels us across Pacific Northwest wilderness and beyond--with human longing and the beating of birds' wings for company."" --CHARLIE J. STEPHENS, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest ""Lampman's prose crackles with wildfire and renewal. The Origins of Ava celebrates the people and places and myths that form us, hold us, and always welcome us home."" --MARTHA WILLIAMS, Ketchum Community Library ""In The Origins of Ava, Annie Lampman lifts you up on a river of lush and luminous prose, carrying you off on an exploration of grief and healing. The particular beauties of northern Idaho's fire-scarred wilds shine from the page. Rooted in this setting, the seemingly disparate characters--ornithologist Ava, the not-quite-ex convict Ezra, and the intrepid young Greer--set out to face their own challenges and adventures. But as their paths overlap and intersect, Lampman reveals, like a kind magician, how home and family are lost and found. This is a poignant exploration of how deeply and surprisingly we are connected to the earth and to each other."" --ERICA NICOL, Washington State University Library ""Lampman's prose is always reaching towards poetry. She has crafted a conversation between mythologies, landscapes, and continents, a novel that shows us the attainable grace beyond our deepest scars and the scars we inflict on each other and the natural world."" --ROCHELLE SMITH, University of Idaho Library

""A well-plotted drama linking three unlikely characters as they make the transition into their lives' next phases."" --KIRKUS REVIEWS ""[The Origin of Ava] is about renewal, redemption, and nature . . . reflecting the environmental crisis our planet is facing."" --BOOKLIST ""Tough, gritty, and rich. All the more powerful when notes of compassion, camaraderie, grace and beauty break through. A remarkable piece of writing."" --PHIL KLAY, Redeployment ""With a forest fire at our backs, Lampman's masterful storytelling compels us across Pacific Northwest wilderness and beyond--with human longing and the beating of birds' wings for company."" --CHARLIE J. STEPHENS, A Wounded Deer Leaps Highest ""The Origin of Ava pins absolution and reinvention to faith in a hurt but resilient natural world. Children, like birds, are gorgeous creatures of Ava's planet, mirroring the past but gesturing toward the future--never fixed, not foregone."" --KARIN ANDERSON, Things I Didn't Do ""Lampman's prose crackles with wildfire and renewal. The Origin of Ava celebrates the people, places, and myths that form us, hold us, and always welcome us home."" --MARTHA WILLIAMS, The Community Library in Ketchum ""An urgent and passionate portrait of the northern Idaho wilderness, its birdlife, and three of its human inhabitants, whose damaged lives intersect, revealing the redemptive power of nature, time, and chosen family."" --CAROL PRICE, BookPeople of Moscow ""A captivating exploration of loss and renewal. Lampman weaves unforgettable characters into a narrative that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit."" --CHELSIA RICE, Montana Book Company ""Lampman has crafted a conversation between mythologies, landscapes, and continents, a novel that shows us the attainable grace beyond our deepest scars and the scars we inflict on each other and the natural world."" --ROCHELLE SMITH, University of Idaho Library ""Poignant. The Origin of Ava is an exploration of how deeply we are connected to the earth and to each other."" --ERICA NICOLE, Washington State University Library

Author Information

ANNIE LAMPMAN is the author of the award-winning novel Sins of the Bees and the poetry chapbook Burning Time. Her short stories, poetry, and narrative essays have been published in seventy-some literary journals and anthologies, including Orion Magazine and The Massachusetts Review. Lampman holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho and has been awarded the 2020 American Fiction Award for Crime Thriller, the Dogwood Literary Award in Fiction, a Best American Essays ""Notable,"" and a Pushcart Prize special mention. She lives in Pullman, Washington, where she bird watches, grows a pollinator garden, and restores a National Historic Registry home.

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