In his Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster famously wrote “’The king died and then the queen died'” is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot.” While Elizabeth Gehman’s Rare Birds: The Extraordinary Tale of the Bermuda Petrel and the Man Who Brought It Back from Extinction is not a novel, its plot is a hard one to beat.
Recounting what happened when a naturalist of extraordinary dedication and perseverance – David Wingate – encountered a bird species of extraordinarily rarity – the Bermuda Petrel, Ms. Gehman goes far beyond the “what” of the events involved in the return of these birds from assumed extinction and weaves the “why” and the “how” of it into a most compelling book indeed.
