THE FEATHER DETECTIVE

Roxie Laybourne's story - one of hard work which led to a new area of forensics and had a major impact on the world of aviation - has never been told before now.

In 1960 an Eastern Airlines flight had no sooner lifted from the runway at Boston Logan Airport when it abruptly took a nose dive into the frigid waters of the Boston Harbor, killing 62 people. This was the nascent, golden age of commercial airflight - luxury in the skies - and a bird strike - the suspected cause of the crash - was the last thing the airline industry needed. The FAA instructed the bird's remains be sent to the Smithsonian Institution for examination. There, they would land on the desk of the only person in the world equipped to make sense of it all.

Her name was Roxie Laybourne, a diminutive but singular woman with thick glasses and a passion for birds. Laybourne didn't know it at the time, but that dead bird marked the start of a remarkable scientific journey that would consume her life and change the course of aviation. She became the world's first forensic ornithologist.

THE FEATHER DETECTIVE takes readers deep within the vaunted backrooms of the Smithsonian to tell the story of a burgeoning science and the enigmatic woman who pioneered it. While her male counterparts were off on exotic assignments exploring relics in Egypt or traipsing through the wilds of Africa, Roxie Laybourne stayed with her birds. Just as forensics was coming into vogue and colliding with anthropology, Roxie was piecing together deadly airplane crashes and eventually helping solve murders - using nothing more than a microscope and some bird feathers.

Part CSI, part Hidden Figures, and part H Is For Hawk, THE FEATHER DETECTIVE is a fascinating tale of what happens when nature and technology collide that illuminates the birth of forensic anthropology, the heyday of the Smithsonian Institution, the triumph of a determined woman breaking down barriers in science, and the amazing paths one's passion can lead them down.

Chris Sweeney, whose journalism has appeared in Audubon, Wired, Popular Science, and Men's Journal, first wrote about Roxie in a fall 2020 feature story for Audubon magazine called "The Incredible Life of Roxie Laybourne." As part of the reporting, Sweeney gained access to a trove of oral history interviews conducted with Laybourne towards the end of her life. That story then appeared in Longreads.com and Don van Natta's The Sunday Long Read, as well as Sam Sifton's NYT newsletter in which he called the story "amazing."