Winner of the Brighthorse Books Prize

5-STAR REVIEW FROM INDIEREADER! "In Circling Flight, Jane Harrington's captivating novel about the initially tenuous but ultimately resilient connections of a few friends in Appalachia, hits every literary and emotional note with skill and purity.... Harrington's prose is spare, evocative, heady with imagination, and drily hilarious." Full review here. 

FROM KIRKUS: "At times, it recalls the work of authors such as Annie Dillard and Barbara Kingsolver. Although a number of specters haunt the novel--suicide, the aftereffects of the war in Iraq, environmental degradation, and even the Irish Potato Famine--it also explores the healing potential of domestic rituals, queer love, and communities formed through music and activism." Full review here.

"Jane Harrington's In Circling Flight is a sensitive and soaring portrayal of people and place, connected by love, friendship, and the alchemy of storytelling. Harrington is a masterful novelist who deserves to be noted as one of the premier voices in Appalachian Literature. I would like to put this book into as many hands as possible, and say, 'Look, this is how it's done!'" Charles Dodd White, author of A Year Without Months and How Fire Runs

"In Circling Flight is an unforgettable book, with a narrative voice that will remain in your mind long after you lay the book aside. Once you open its pages, you will not want to put down this poignant tale. Harrington possesses the gifts of a born storyteller and the natural ability to spin an unforgettable yarn." Sylvia Bailey Shurbutt, Anthology of Appalachian Writers Managing Editor and Shepherd University Center for Appalachian Studies Director

“From the first lonely starstruck moments the characters will get you. You too have now fallen for the dog. By novel's end you are folded into the symphony of this very particular journey.” Evelyn Conlon, Irish author of fiction, most recently the collection Moving About the Place

"Jane Harrington's riveting debut novel is ultimately about the sacrosanctity of the Appalachian earth and the indomitable people tithed to it. In prose elegiac, journalistically precise, and thoroughly poetic, Harrington evokes a glorious, pillaged landscape every bit as intricate as her unforgettable characters’ precipitously interwoven lives. Her range as a storyteller is breathtaking, layered with a naturalist’s eyewitness testimony, an activist’s heart, the sonic heft of a hammered dulcimer, and a fabulist’s impressionistic imagination. This is a timely, utterly crucial, and gorgeously rendered novel.” Joseph Bathanti, North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-14) & author of Light at the Seam