Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the short story collection The Beauty of Their Youth (part of the Wolfson Press American Storytellers series), the novels In Hovering Flight and Stranger Here Below, and the short story collection Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction). She is a Professor of English at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA.

Her newest novel, Ghost Cranes, is an exploration of America’s cultural divide and, more importantly, a deeper exploration of love, the natural world, and the complicated bonds of family. It focuses a keen eye on gun culture, rural bigotry, and the perilous disregard for climate change, endangered species, and scientific research displayed by many Americans. But it also depicts the lives of rural Midwesterners who are not bigots or gun fanatics or science deniers—people like friends and family members that author Joyce Hinnefeld knows and loves, including teachers, researchers, journalists, therapists, activists, and more. 

Two articles that appeared after Hinnefeld completed earlier drafts of the novel eerily parallel events depicted there: “A 50-year effort to raise endangered whooping cranes comes to an end” from The Washington Post, and “Suicides, Drug Addiction, and High School Football” from The New York Times.