Migratory Animals

When Flannery, a young scientist, returns home to Austin from five years of research in Nigeria, she's already feeling stuck -- she's left behind her loving fiance, and isn't sure when she'll be able to return. Soon, she sees that her sister, Molly, has begun to show signs -- tremors, panic attacks -- of the crippling genetic disease that slowly killed their mother. As their close-knit circle of friends struggles with Molly's diagnosis, Flannery most of all must grapple with what her future will hold: a thrilling life of love and pursuing her career in Nigeria, or a quieter, heartbreaking fulfillment of her obligations at the home she's always known -- for better and for worse. As the story shifts between the perspectives of each of these friends, we see how life since their college days has brought all of them new challenges to be reckoned with, and painful twists on the lives they'd always planned for themselves.

A debut from an exciting young writer, Migratory Animals is a moving, thought-provoking novel about the meaning of home and the responsibilities we give each other and ourselves.