Three lives are drawn together by fate, flight, and the enduring pull of the natural world.

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Ava Waters has everything under control. She is a rising star in the world of ornithology, a respected professor, and comfortably in love with a fellow academic. But when her father and star student both die on the same day, Ava abandons everything and everyone she knows and retreats to her uncle’s birding casa in Ecuador.

Meanwhile, eleven-year-old Greer Groff is on the run in the wilderness of western Idaho with only a dog and two llamas for company. The only witness to an act of shocking violence, she must survive on her own using her wits, imagination, and the countless hours she spent listening to an old friend's mystical forest stories to guide her way. 

Also longing for a better life, convicted fellow Ezra Fossman may have served his time, but he’s done waiting for freedom. He jumps parole on a container ship bound for Central America, willing to leave everything behind to escape a future defined by his past.

Subtly suffused with myth and with stories woven together by ravens, The Origin of Ava is a timeless and timely reminder that however hard we try to break with the past, we may just be setting up a collision course with our truest selves.

“A tough and gritty and richly observed story … A remarkable piece of writing.”
—PHIL KLAY, National Book Award winner and author of Redeployment