Monday, November 12, 2012  Barbara Kingsolver's new novel is
about rural perceptions of changes in climate and nature  Author
Barbara Kingsolver, right, is taking on climate change in her
most recent novel, Flight Behavior. She recently spoke with
NPR's Flora Lichtman about the book and what Lichtman calls its
central philosophical question: "Why do we believe what we
believe and how is it that two people can look at the exact same
set of circumstances and see two completely different things?"
The novel is set on a farm in Southern Appalachia, Kingsolver's
home region, where a shift in climate has caused monarch
butterflies to settle for the first time. The butterflies
normally winter in Mexico, but because of climate change, their
pattern has brought them to a hilltop farm in East Tennessee.
Journalists, scientists and other outsiders call the event a
drastic effect of climate change, but people in the rural,
conservative town see it as a miracle from God.  "It's a novel
in which I use this device [the mona