Cheryl Grey Bostrom ’80 MA English
Tyndale House Publishers: 2024
Twelve years have passed since Celia has seen Burnaby. She immediately notes how much the quiet, bone-hunting boy has changed. He has his doctorate now, along with a more refined set of social skills, and is about to start his career as a professor of veterinary medicine at Washington State University. She has her doctorate, too. Her specialty: birds.
Celia agrees to road-trip with Burnaby from rural Whatcom County, where they met as teens in 1985 in Cheryl Grey (Hobson) Bostrom’s 2021 debut novel Sugar Birds, to WSU and the rolling hills of the Palouse. Most of the story takes place in this landscape, and Bostrom’s lyrical descriptions of it will resonate with those familiar with Pullman and its environs. It might even make them nostalgic for it.
Her poetic prose is chock-full of Evergreen State imagery and references—bald eagles, Nanaimo bars, the salty seaweed scent of the sound, Anthony’s at Squalicum Harbor, Spokane’s Riverfront Park, the Snake River, a pocket of unspoiled Palouse prairie. Palouse prairie restoration is a sub-theme in this compelling sequel, which solidly stands on its own merit.
Leaning on Air is told from multiple perspectives—mostly those of Celia and Burnaby. His little sister, Agate or “Aggie,” a wildlife photographer, makes a brief but important appearance in this volume, too.
Leaning on Air is a captivating story of spirituality and science, wind and wildfire, hardship and harvest, and the meaning of marriage. At its heart, it’s a love story. Expect exquisite writing, romance, mystery, tragedy, healing, and threads of Christian contemplation.
Bostrom plays with time, too, opening her story in 1997, then skipping ahead to 2008, when Celia is 39 and a professor at the University of Idaho. In between, readers encounter the pain of three generations of women, family secrets, loss, and, most of all, hope.