Set against a spontaneous cross-country road trip following the migrating birds, this passionate, lyrical memoir is one woman's reflections on midlife, her important personal relationships, her kaleidoscopic past, and her uncertain future. To fifty-six-year-old Anne Batterson, a woman whose life has been filled with adventure -- as a commercial pilot, an international skydiving champion, a trekking guide in Nepal -- her husband's decision to retire felt like a death sentence. Yearning for some way to reconcile herself to the future that was rapidly unfolding before her, she packed up her VW camper and hit the road with maps, bird guides, and little else except the desire to follow the fall migration and the bone-deep hunch that birds had something important to teach her. In this beautifully written narrative of that extraordinary trip, Batterson writes movingly not only about her experiences with the birds but also about the people she loves, has lost, and connects with along the way. Events from the present trigger vivid stories from the past. In the chapter "The Journey Within the Journey," a long, lonely night in a deserted campground in Virginia conjures up the ghosts of a desperate solo road trip she made when she was twenty-one. A towering cumulus cloud in Illinois brings back a breathtaking free fall into a similar cloud in "My Time as a Bird." An encounter with a great blue heron summons a compelling account of her mother's last afternoon in the world. "Bears in the Woods" describes a run-in with two Deliverance -type men in West Virginia, which brings back the murder of a dear friend in the woods of Connecticut. By the end of the journey, the ghosts of the past, like the author herself, have become part of a more fluid, more spiritual reality -- wild and spare and elegant and timeless -- one that is always out there, "quickening on the far side of reality." A unique mix of memoir and nature writing, The Black Swan is a charming story of a woman's odyssey. David Gessner author of "Return of the Osprey" and "A Wild, Rank Place" Part picaresque, part spiritual journey, part adventure story, "The Black Swan" shines with the energy of its life-loving author. Read it and take an exhilarating break from the everyday, following Batterson "from adventure to adventure" -- from the thrill of jumping out of planes to the deep, meditative immersion of living "in the time of the birds." "The Black Swan" does what the best books do: makes you thrill in the reading while aching to get out into the world. John Elder author of "Reading the Mountains of Home" Migratory birds both inspired Anne Batterson to take to the road and amplified her sense of her own humanity. In "The Black Swan, " Batterson reminds her readers, too, that the passages of our individual lives achieve their fullest meaning within the rhythms and wholeness of the earth. Maria Gosnell author of "Zero 3 Bravo: Solo Across America in a Small Plane" An absorbing chronicle by a woman who has had many adventures that could be considered liberating -- free-falling from airplanes, climbing mountains in Nepal, flying dead reckoning over open ocean -- yet who found even greater release from constrictions of mind and spirit during a quiet cross-country trip alone in a VW bus to look at migrating birds. Batterson writes searchingly about what the birds and the silence and the solitude taught her of the long sweep of natural time, the people who were migrating through her life, and the "wild bird" within her. David Gessner author of "Return of the Osprey" and "A Wild, Rank Place" Part picaresque, part spiritual journey, part adventure story, "The Black Swan" shines with the energy of its life-loving author. Read it and take an exhilarating break from the everyday, following Batterson "from adventure to adventure" -- from the thrill of jumping out of planes to the deep, meditative immersion of living "in the time of the birds." "The Black Swan" does what the best books do: makes you thrill in the reading while aching to get out into the world. John Elder author of "Reading the Mountains of Home" Migratory birds both inspired Anne Batterson to take to the road and amplified her sense of her own humanity. In "The Black Swan," Batterson reminds her readers, too, that the passages of our individual lives achieve their fullest meaning within the rhythms and wholeness of the earth. Maria Gosnell author of "Zero 3 Bravo: Solo Across America in a Small Plane" An absorbing chronicle by a woman who has had many adventures that could be considered liberating -- free-falling from airplanes, climbing mountains in Nepal, flying dead reckoning over open ocean -- yet who found even greater release from constrictions of mind and spirit during a quiet cross-country trip alone in a VW bus to look at migrating birds. Batterson writes searchingly about what the birds and the silence and the solitude taught her of the long sweep of natural time, the people who were m