Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/960054
95 APRIL 2018 disappears without a trace, likely the victim of a serial killer, but no one seems to know what to do. Vast numbers of the birds loved by Billy Flynn, a gifted amateur ornithol- ogist, are succumbing to pesticides. In the Geneva of Billy Flynn and his younger sister, Nell, factories close, leaving people unmoored and worried about the future. e stately elm trees that line the city streets are dying. is is not to say that A Catalog of Birds is depressing, or an unmitigated downer. Harrington knows how to write a book that keeps you reading with carefully observed descriptions of nature, nely drawn characters, and hope for the healing of the natural world. It is also not autobiographical. "I got fascinated by my character, who loves birds," Harrington says, explaining that she is not an ornithologist, nor did she grow up in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. "He can hear them as few people can. I needed to create the Garden of Eden, and then to take it away." "I am very pleased and proud that it's been published so well, and am hearing wonderful things from people," she says. "When veterans come to my readings and talk to me about how they read the book, I am moved and gratied." She may now call herself a novelist, but Harrington has not abandoned the theatre, and has a musical adaptation of Alice Bliss in the works. She is delighted with how Hamilton has aected musical theatre on Broadway. "Lin Manuel Miranda is brilliant, and Hamilton has broken all the rules about what makes a Broadway hit," she says. "Crashing through the 'Disneycation' of Broadway, Hamilton is a vividly multicultural work about American history, a serious subject rarely found on Broadway." In her next book, Laura Harrington takes on even more ambitious subject matter: the intersection of oil, politics, money, and war. It promises to be another page-turner. "I am passionate about a lot of things, and I write so that the reader can have the emotional ride." CONTACT lauraharringtonbooks.com "I am very pleased and proud that it's been published so well, and am hearing wonderful things from people. When veterans come to my readings and talk to me about how they read the book, I am moved and gratied."