My book For Want of Wings: A Bird with Teeth and a Dinosaur in the Family is the story of my ancestor finding an 83-million-year-old fossil and my visits to the canyon in Kansas where he found it. On my first visit there I took my 26-year-old daughter with me. When the book opens, both of us are at a turning point.
Imbedded in this hybrid memoir is the single most complete account of
the 1872 Yale College Scientific Expedition into the American West.
Thank you, Kansas History, for permission to quote in full this review that appeared in the Summer 2023 issue. Please click on the cover for the full review.
The October 2022 issue of Archives of Natural History carried Paul D. Brinkman’s review of For Want of Wings, including the following excerpt. For the full review, see Archives of Natural History, Oct. 2022, Issue 49.2.
“Part history of science and part memoir, Jill Hunting’s book is a wide-flying exploration of her great-grandfather Thomas Hubbard Russell’s discovery, in western Kansas, of a rare fossil bird with a beak full of teeth. … Lovers of great storytelling will certainly appreciate the way Hunting skilfully articulates so many disjointed fragments: the abolitionist John Brown; the founding of Yale’s most notorious secret society, Skull and Bones; lemonade-hawking triplets; a mansplaining cyclist; and much more besides, into a single, very readable narrative about a fossil bird with runty wings. … The author’s best and most creative inferences include beautiful details about a soldier’s life on the bleak Kansas plain in the 1870s, including guide Edward Lane’s penchant for profanity; design flaws of the US Army-issued Sibley tent; expedition member Benjamin Hoppin’s night spent lost on the prairie; and speculations about her great-grandfather’s personality based on a minute examination of his photograph by an expert portraitist. The author naturally wants to tell the reader something about Russell’s reaction when he found his spectacular fossil, but, unfortunately, the discoverer left no record. Therefore, she cleverly substitutes a vivid, first-hand account of George F. Sternberg’s discovery of a beautiful duck-billed dinosaur skeleton covered with skin impressions. Hunting makes it easy to imagine that Russell was every bit as excited as Sternberg was. … For Want of Wings is an entertaining read that makes a valuable contribution to the growing literature on history of American palaeontology.”
Thank you, , Western Writers of America’s Roundup magazine and Charlotte Hinger for your review of For Want of Wings, including this excerpt:
“This book is a fascinating glimpse into the science of paleontology. It combines memoir, autobiography, biography, speculation, and poetry into a coherent whole. … Hunting’s approach of soft-focus realism permits a foray into some of her great-great-grandfather’s encounters with abolitionist John Brown, descriptions of 19th Century medical practices, stunning information about Yale University, competition among paleontologists, and contemporary environmental movements. Yet all these issues and persons manage to relate to the curious little bird-dinosaur at the heart of her book … For Want of Wings is complex, with a refreshingly varied path to narrative history.”
“October 27, 2022, [marked] the sesquicentennial of the discovery of one of the Peabody Museum’s most significant specimens: a fossilized partial skeleton, over three feet tall, of the ancient toothed bird Hesperornis regalis. It was discovered on October 27, 1872, by Thomas Russell 1872PhB, 1875MD, in the 85-million-year-old chalk beds of Kansas. … As for Thomas Russell, he would be proud to know that his great-granddaughter, Jill Hunting, wrote about his find in her book For Want of Wings: A Bird With Teeth and a Dinosaur in the Family. David Skelly, director of the Peabody, has written: ‘As [Hunting] notes, Hesperornis is perhaps the least famous of the most important fossils ever discovered. Her book should change that.’ ” —Daniel Brinkman, “Rare As Hens’ Teeth,” Yale Alumni Magazine
Thank you, Midwest Book Review, for reviewing For Want of Wings. Read the full review here.
Thank you, bookseller Jennifer Kassebaum, for your review of For Want of Wings for High Plains Public Radio’s Readers Book Club. Click here either to listen to the 4-minute audio or to read the transcript, which includes this excerpt:
“This book is about Hunting’s great-grandfather, who discovered 83-million-year-old dinosaur bones in western Kansas during an expedition with the legendary paleontologist O. C. Marsh in 1872.
“Part biography, part memoir, this book leaves the reader delighted to have gained a greater knowledge about paleontology, the settlement of Kansas, and the author’s interesting ancestors. … For me, an equally intriguing reference point is the author’s musings as a parent. Hunting contemplates what her great-grandfather’s parents may have thought about their son’s travel with O. C. Marsh to western Kansas in 1872, and her parents’ concerns about her brother Pete’s involvement in Vietnam, where he was the first civilian casualty of the Vietnam War in 1965. The author muses, ‘What of our sons’ and daughters’ wings? If we hold our children back, hoping to shield them from every risk and danger, how will they ever learn to fly?’ “
On YouTube
Jill discussed and answered questions about For Want of Wings as part of the Pasadena (Calif.) Public Library’s “Authors & Their Journeys” series: Watch here.
Book description from the University of Oklahoma Press Catalog:
In 1872, a young graduate of Yale University named Thomas Russell unearthed the bones of an 83,000,000-year-old dinosaur in western Kansas. The rare fossil, an avian dinosaur with teeth and flightless wings, proved that birds evolved from reptiles. More than a century later, Russell’s great-granddaughter set out to retrace her ancestor’s forgotten expedition. Part detective history, part memoir, For Want of Wings is Jill Hunting’s captivating account of her journey into prehistory, national history, and family history.
In her quest to piece together fragments of her family’s past, Hunting ends up crisscrossing the United States, from California to Connecticut. On her first trip across the Colorado Rockies to the fossil bed site near Russell Springs, Kansas, Hunting brings along her then twenty-six-year-old daughter. When the book opens, mother and daughter are both at crossroads, each seeking to understand the impact of personal decisions on the landscape of her life.
As Hunting ventures forward, she encounters unexpected resources, such as ten-year-old triplets who converse with her about dinosaurs and a Connecticut museum where portraits of her ancestors hang on the walls. Through lively descriptions of these visits, Hunting advances a view of history as nonlinear and full of unlikely coincidences.
For Want of Wings is also the carefully researched story of the least known of Yale’s four expeditions into the American West, led by eminent paleontologist O. C. Marsh; the friendship between Russell’s father and abolitionist John Brown; a portrait of a mother and daughter evolving in self-understanding; and an inquiry into matters of race in American history and the author’s own family. In the end, all these pieces converge, like fragments of a fossil, to form an exquisitely patterned work of historical exploration.
PPhoto: Jill recording For Want of Wings at Planetwood Studios
Listen to a Chapter
Click on an audio link above.
Buy the Book
For Want of Wings is available from your favorite bookstore and the following online booksellers:
IndieBound (finding aid for independent booksellers)
Additional Resources
Find book club discussion questions here. To inquire about Jill’s availability to meet with your book club by Zoom, to visit your bookstore, or to speak to your group, please email her through the contact page below.
To request a review copy for your publication or other media, call or write to OU Press’s Director of Marketing and Sales, Katie Baker, tel. 405-325-3200 or katie-baker@ou.edu.
To consider For Want of Wings for a course you’re teaching, visit www.oupress.com/contact/examination-and-desk-copies/ for information about obtaining an exam copy.
Photo: As the sun rises over the Jonata Winery estate vineyards in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, Jill Hunting gives life to the adage that being a writer sometimes looks a lot like staring out the window.
Previous Work
A former food and wine editor and writer, Jill is also the author of Finding Pete : Rediscovering the Brother I Lost in Vietnam. The genesis of the book was a writing retreat in Umbria. There, the tranquility and beauty of the Italian countryside moved her to set aside a book about truffles and explore the mystery of her brother's death as a civilian aid worker in wartime Vietnam. The Ken Burns and Lynn Novick series The Vietnam War features Pete in Episode 2.
She is the editor of the Stone Edge Farm Cookbook, a 372-page coffee table book, which in 2014 was named Book of the Year by the International Association of Culinary Professionals and winner of the Julia Child Award.
Jill has worked at the Corning Museum of Glass, in New York; at the Omniplex museum and an advertising agency, both in Oklahoma City; for the Jesus Seminar, a group of biblical scholars challenging the New Testament gospels’ historical validity; in the marketing department of HarperCollins in San Francisco; and as a magazine editor and writer based in Napa and Sonoma wine country. Her liberal arts education includes a major in American studies at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and a master's degree from San Francisco Theological Seminary.
She resides with her husband in Pasadena, California.
Interviews, Reviews, and Endorsements
Jill discusses For Want of Wings (Pasadena Public Library “Authors & Their Journeys” series) and answers questions
YouTube interview with Foreword Reviews Managing Editor Michelle Schingler
“Jill Hunting has given us the story of a beautiful, intimate, and unforgettable journey that shows how ineffably the past is woven into the present, how our ancestors’ complicated lives shape our own, and what is gained when we come face to face with our history.” —Lynn Novick, documentary filmmaker and collaborator, with Ken Burns, on Hemingway, The Vietnam War, Baseball, and The Civil War
“Jill Hunting is a great storyteller and this is a truly great story. As she notes, Hesperornis is perhaps the least famous of the most important fossils ever discovered. Her book should change that. As Darwin emphasized, an intermediate form like Hesperornis helps us understand how evolution works in ways that are fundamental to understanding both the past and future of our planet.” —David K. Skelly, Frank R. Oastler Professor of Ecology, Yale University School of the Environment and Director, Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History
“Partly a rousing adventure in pursuit of scientific discovery, partly a series of intimate ruminations on self and history, For Want of Wings charms the reader to explore unexpected byways of knowledge as it crisscrosses the United States through time and space.” —Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Research Professor of American History at Harvard University and author of Fighting Words: The Bold American Journalists Who Brought the World Home between the Wars
“Jill Hunting has woven together an unforgettable tapestry of family history, fossil hunting, and high adventures in the American West. This finely honed and deeply original book reminds us that the past and the present aren’t as far apart as they sometimes seem to be, and the lives of Hunting’s Yale-centric ancestors have surprising resonances today. A fascinating read for both dinophiles and history lovers.” —Julia Flynn Siler, New York Times best-selling author of The White Devil’s Daughter, Lost Kingdom, and The House of Mondavi
“In this engrossing memoir, Jill Hunting has woven her own family’s past into the weft and the warp of American history. This rich tapestry truly contains multitudes, ranging from the founding of Skull and Bones at Yale University to the discovery of toothed birds in western Kansas, from antebellum debates over the abolition of slavery to the forced relocation of indigenous tribes on the Great Plains. It is emotionally complex and beautifully told, an absolute pleasure to read.” —Lukas Rieppel, Associate Professor of History, Brown University and author of Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle
“Jill Hunting’s For Want of Wings follows a delightfully discursive and personal path across important American history, tracking the footsteps of ancestors whose adventures in scientific discovery and political change resonate to this day. I avidly followed, feeling as enriched as did Jill and her daughter, May, out on the Great Plains and the Rockies. This is a warm and touching story showing the simultaneity of past and present—just my kind of book.” —David Haward Bain, author of Empire Express and The Old Iron Road
“A person’s life is not just a thread from birth to death, but rather a complicated tapestry interwoven with the lives of many others. In the case of For Want of Wings, the author’s careful research has restored the fabric surrounding the life of Thomas Hubbard Russell (1851–1916), her great-grandfather. Russell was a Yale graduate who made an important, but largely forgotten, scientific discovery in 1872 while collecting fossils with O. C. Marsh in the wilds of western Kansas, and then went on to become a respected medical surgeon in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. His life and the background of his once-in-a-lifetime discovery of a ‘bird with teeth’ make for a fascinating read.” —Michael J. Everhart, author of Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea and Adjunct Curator of Paleontology, Sternberg Museum of Natural History
“Jill Hunting is a sleuth when it comes to finding details, and she has the talent to weave many threads together to create a coherent story that combines personal history, family history, national history, natural history, travel, American West, important characters, and more. She takes the reader on the search and adventure to tell the story of finding the first complete fossil of Hesperornis regalis. Hunting illuminates a long-buried facet of the paleontology and history of Kansas. It is a gem.” —Leo E. Oliva, author of Fort Wallace: Sentinel on the Smoky Hill Trail and Fort Larned on the Santa Fe Trail
“Jill Hunting’s For Want of Wings is the enrapturing, wide-ranging, and thoughtful account of her great-grandfather’s discovery of a rare dinosaur fossil in 1872. … Like digging through the ‘sepulcher of chalk in a Kansas fossil bed,’ the book begins with a few scant documents: rare historical photographs, clippings from an alumni magazine, and family hearsay. It uses these to illuminate [Thomas H.] Russell’s ‘inconspicuous life.’ The exploration then stretches from the dusty archives of the [Yale] Peabody Museum and journals of similar expeditions, to accounts of the Russell family’s ties to early abolitionists, to colorful descriptions of life on the Kansas frontier and the region’s natural history. … For Want of Wings is a riveting and entertaining work of scientific history that also considers the value of connecting with one’s family story.” —Foreword Reviews, *starred review*
The author and her daughter, May, at the fossil bed where Thomas H. Russell found his Hesperornis regalis specimen in 1872. Photo by Michael J. Everhart.
The author viewing the iconic photo of the 1872 Yale College Scientific Expedition, at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, Woodland Park, Colorado.