DEAD HORSE BAY

In Dyson’s novel, an unlikely trio band together to save geese in New York City scheduled to be destroyed.

After a plane collides with a flock of geese, forcing it to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River, the local authorities decide to kill all the geese living near the airport. Tanisha, a student at Brooklyn Law School and a member of the activist group Goose Watch, is committed to saving them, a mission she understands is fraught with challenges. She finds a partner in Marty, a cranky but charming 73-year-old New Yorker who happens to own a sailboat, their means of investigating the site of the planned roundup near Kennedy Airport. Marty is initially unmoved by the birds’ plight; he confesses, “I’m not sure that I care for geese.” However, he is angry about Kennedy Airport’s construction, which led to the destruction of the local environment, a once-vibrant aquatic community (and Marty’s “playground” as a child) reduced to a “dead zone.” Dyson movingly contrasts the different motivations of Marty and Tanisha. “Marty thought of Tanisha and her fight to save the geese. He wondered how long she had wanted this. It couldn’t be more than a couple of years since US Airways Flight 1549 had landed in the Hudson River, and the roundups of geese had begun. His wish to see life come back to the dead zone had started 65 years ago, about 40 years before Tanisha was born.” Eventually, he comes to care for the geese as well and is inspired to hatch various plans to save them, a dedication that gets him trouble with the law and links the pair with Don, a former duck hunter now haunted by the death he once caused. The author ably paints a melancholic picture of a lost world and a city bureaucracy indifferent to the value of nature. The plot, however, unfolds at a lumbering pace and finally loses steam; this tale probably would have been better composed as a short story.

A thoughtful novel that loses its dramatic energy.