The Ways of the Bird Rising centres on a small Scottish island community threatened by offshore
fracking. It takes the idea of “community” in the widest sense, extending its reach to the
narrative voices of animals, plants, stones and the island itself in an attempt to evoke the
consequences of resource extraction on a more-than-human world. The human story centres on
Alana, who grew up on the island and is, with mixed feelings, moving back there after years
away; and Comgall, a Canadian geologist who comes to the island as an employee of the
company in charge of the fracking. In their own ways, both are reconciling their relationship to
the land and to their respective rural homes, while being opened to the lively multi-species world
around them—a process mirrored in the reader’s experience as the island’s many inhabitants
contribute to narrating their home
