num_pages: 304
description: A delicately rendered memoir on motherhood family and the beauty of the natural world. In fall 2007 Lynn Thomson experiences a huge life shift. Her teenage son Yeats is just beginning high school. Yeats has always struggled against the system against the pressure to conform. He is a poet at acutely sensitive highly intelligent and solitary by nature. Lynn and Yeats have always been close but after fourteen years as a stay-at-home mom Lynn is going back to work for her husband Ben who has just opened his own bookstore. When Lynn and Yeats take a trip to Vancouver Island they discover a mutual love of bird watching. Lynn is the only other person Yeats has found who loves nature and watching birds. Plus she has a car. Lynn describes in wondrous detail the many trips she and Yeats take from the Wye Marsh and Pelee Island in Ontario to Vancouver Island in British Columbia to an ill-fated trip to the Galapagos Islands. The two grow closer with each bird-watching expedition. At the same time Lynn notices that her son is beginning to pull away  and she must learn to let go. Birding with Yeats is a delicate sensitive and gentle reflection on the unique bond between a mother and son and the magic that is the natural world.
language: English
title: Birding with Yeats: A Mother's Memoir
publisher: House of Anansi Press