Field Guide

She came to study bats. Then her professor disappeared.

For Annabel Mendelssohn, studying spectacled fruit bats in Australia offers the possibility of discovery—and distance from the unanswered questions surrounding her brother’s death. There are waterfalls to explore, observations to record, and messages to send to her sister, Alice, back home.

Then Professor John Goode disappears. His son Leon leaves his museum job in Boston to help find him, and Annabel’s research gives way to a search with deeply personal stakes. In a landscape full of unfamiliar life, the two are drawn into mysteries that cannot be settled by collecting facts alone.

The rain forest, the bond between sisters, and the ache of missing someone come together in a novel about the limits of knowing—even when looking closely is your life’s work.