PositiveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... [a] mostly lighthearted memoir with segues—some quirky, some profound ... Perhaps the boys’ affable indifference (except during one veterinary emergency) helps prepare readers for Flynn’s look at the darker side of human-peafowl relationships. This writer is at his most assured when recounting violence, whether mafia hits or peacock whackings ... Unfortunately, fewer than three pages are allocated to peafowl in the wild, their distribution on two continents, and their population threats ... The decline in global sand resources seems to trouble the author more than the habitat destruction imperiling Southeast Asia’s endangered Pavo muticus, the green peafowl. Deployment of eight tons of silica sand for coop improvement inspires reflections from the author on consumer guilt and personal responsibility, while the ecological impacts of feral and farmed peacocks, and humans’ culpability in global wildfowl declines, remain unquestioned ... Flynn gives us an intimate and humor-laced ode to a glorious being, one \'wondrously improbable\' enough to distract and uplift a father, husband, and reporter who has witnessed crime, war, cruelty, and disaster on six continents. Confined in a scrap-wood coop that Martha Stewart would never approve of, Flynn’s peacocks, through his well-crafted prose, set each of us free to seek out beauty and bring it closer to where we live.
