Submitted by lluncheon on Tue, 2015-12-22 17:27
After several years of marriage, Rachel Dickinson’s husband Tim revealed that in his youth he had been a falconer. So begins the odyssey recounted in Falconer On The Edge (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24). With dry wit, a fairly resigned attitude and her game-face on, Rachel traces the story of the most famous contemporary falconer of all, Steve Chindgren. His pursuit of the perfect bird led him all over the American West. Dickinson masterfully blends the romance of falconry with an unerring insight into the more unsettling sides of obsession. Both her prose and her story recall John Krakauer’s Into the Wild as we follow Chindgren’s path through self-discovery and personal challenge.