The Origin of Ava

Following three characters eager to find their place in the world, The Origin of Ava explores the healing that happens in life after loss.

"Remarkable. A tough, gritty, and richly observed story...All the more powerful when compassion, camaraderie, grace, and beauty break through."
--PHIL KLAY, National Book Award winner and author of Redeployment

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 whose research interests overlap with her own. But when her father and star student both die on the same day, Ava abandons everything and everyone she has ever known and retreats to her uncle's birding casa in Ecuador.

Meanwhile in the wilderness of western Idaho, Greer Groff is eleven years old and on the run. 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 takes us from the Pacific Northwest to the Galapagos and back again. Annie Lampman has written 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.