Religion with wings

O’Connor, a Northern California falconer, has written a memoir that pulls together the various strands of her life in the flight of raptors. Fascinated by the peregrine she first encounters as a child, O’Connor eventually becomes an accomplished falconer. But she also pursues her own mother, separated from her by a difficult divorce and a remarriage to a controlling man. Then there’s O’Connor’s wandering youth, including a period as a stripper, which leads her to understand the relationship of prey to predator. O’Connor’s relentless urge for the hunt draws her toward the peregrine—her falcon, Anakin, and yes, he’s named for that Anakin—and toward what she calls the “religion” of falconry, rather than toward her self-acknowledged Jerry Springer-style family. It is a choice to be predator rather than prey, to fly rather than to skitter along the ground. O’Connor will read from and sign Lift at The Avid Reader at the Tower, 1600 Broadway, at 2 p.m. on Friday, November 6.