Late Migrations
Late Migrations is the first book by Margaret Renkl, a New York Times contributing opinion writer based in Nashville. It alternates short essays about the natural world outside her back door with vignettes from her mother's and grandmother's lives in rural Alabama. Bluebirds, snakes, and slow-changing seasons sit alongside scenes of childhood, marriage, illness, and loss. The book reads as a quiet argument that paying attention to a single yard can be a way of paying attention to a whole family. Billy Renkl, the author's brother, contributed the small color illustrations throughout.
What you might want to know about Late Migrations
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Margaret Renkl braids essays about birds, gardens, and the Southern landscape with the story of her Alabama family across four generations.
Jenna Bush Hager named Late Migrations the August 2019 Read with Jenna selection on the Today Show, calling it a quiet, comforting book about family and the natural world and bringing Margaret Renkl on air to discuss her Southern roots.
It is both. The book is structured as a series of short essays, some about Renkl's family in Alabama and some about the wildlife in her Nashville backyard, arranged so that the two threads echo each other.
Late Migrations was written by Margaret Renkl, published in 2019 by Milkweed Editions.
Late Migrations is 240 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Late Migrations takes most readers 4 to 5 hours to finish.
Late Migrations is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.