Magdalena Mountain

June 15, 2018
An elegant, eccentric novel of love, loneliness, and lepidoptera.There's plenty of clef in this debut novel by noted naturalist Pyle (Through a Green Lens: Fifty Years of Writing for Nature, 2016, etc.), in which a Yale-educated scholar of butterflies finds himself on a mountain in Colorado among grylloblattids, ptarmigan, and city-fleeing monks in search of--well, himself, for one thing, but also a species of butterfly that has made its home in the world there: "A minute tube of life," Pyle writes of one nascent representative, "he sleeps on as the world of Magdalena Mountain freezes, solid and pale." Erebia magdalena is the true hero of Pyle's nature-rich tale, wanting only a little room to flutter and reproduce in the short span of life allotted to it. Complicating the picture is James Mead, our intrepid scientist hero, who confides to his diary, "All I want for Christmas is a Magdalena," but who, in the spirit of discovery, has plenty of other questions, too--for one, why Magdalena Mountain bears that name. Answering some of them is the enigmatic Mary Glanville, a medical mystery: She's survived a long fall off the mountain, has suffered a trauma whose "exact nature...is puzzling," and now identifies with Mary Magdalene. ("I do not advertise the fact widely, for reasons that will be clear to you if you have ever been incarcerated," she tells James.) Mary has fled a group home in Denver in a season and place where fresh snow falls on the old slush "like a clean diaper over a dirty one," and on the mountain she falls in with a community of monks who just happen to bear butterfly-ish names like Xerxes, Oberon, and Attalus. Not all of them are on the up-and-up, leading to a craggy chase scene that would do Zane Grey proud. The story is a touch predictable at moments, but mostly Pyle pulls off some pleasing surprises, and with a butterfly-light touch.Worthy company for work by other naturalist/novelists: Nabokov, Matthiessen, Kingsolver.

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June 25, 2018
The first novel from prolific nature writer Pyle (Wintergreen) is bathed in exquisite and venerating descriptions of nature, wildlife, and pristine environments. The bountiful tundra of Magdalena Mountain in the Colorado Rockies hosts a group of people and creatures who achieve purpose and belonging amid the beauty. In the early 1970s, eager Yale graduate student James Mead conducts research on the mountain, tracking the elusive “stunning black velvet” Erebia magdalena butterfly and the equally ethereal October Carson, a lepidopterist whose field journals Mead devours. Also drawn to the mountain are pantheistic naturalist monks led by the astute Oberon, and scrupulous Yale Divinity School grad Mary Glanville, who, after a head injury, believes herself to be the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. As these characters converge, the Erebia magdalena lives out its brief and precarious life cycle in crystalline detail: “Erebia looks much as he did upon eclosure: dark chocolate, velvet, and whole, though the sparse overscaling of prismatic rainbow scales that made him iridesce at first have fallen away.” Pyle eschews a traditional plot for philosophical discussion of the Earth as Mother, the death of ecosystems, overpopulation, and nuclear threat. His contemplative novel will be a treat for readers who delight in the tranquility of nature.

July 1, 2018
A young woman nearly plummets to her death on a Colorado mountainside, while hundreds of miles away, a grad student stumbles upon the journals of a renowned scientist who seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Just as in the butterfly effect of chaos theory, so, too, do Pyle's seemingly unrelated protagonists intersect in this lyrically wrought tale of discovery, exploration, and renewal. Mary Glanville recovers from her accident in an altered mental state in which she believes she is the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. Determined James Mead is at Yale, studying lepidoptera, specifically, the famously rare Magdalena alpine butterfly found high in the Rockies. As both pursue their own holy grails, some mysteries are solved while others erupt in surprising violence. In this debut novel, acclaimed nature-writer Pyle (Mariposa Road, 2010) brings a lush sense of the majesty, mystique, and magic to be found in all of nature's forms.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)