Program Description
Event Details
As part of the 10th Coronado Community READ, Coronado Public Library welcomes author Chris Sweeney for a special evening celebrating the 2026 Community READ selection, The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne.
The Feather Detective tells the remarkable true story of Roxie Laybourne, the world’s first forensic ornithologist, whose groundbreaking work identifying bird feathers helped solve crimes, prevent airplane disasters, and transform scientific understanding. Blending biography, history, and natural science, the book has been praised as “engrossing” and “a biography that reads like a novel.”
Chris Sweeney is a journalist and author whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Audubon. In this talk, he will discuss Roxie Laybourne’s extraordinary legacy, the research behind the book, and why her story resonates today.
This event kicks off a monthlong celebration of reading, discovery, and community marking ten years of Coronado Community READ.
This event is free to attend thanks to the support of the City of Coronado and Friends of the Coronado Public Library. Seating is first come, first seated.
About The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne
In 1960, an Eastern Airlines flight had no sooner lifted from the runway at Boston Logan Airport when it struck a flock of birds and took a nosedive into the shallow waters of the Boston Harbor, killing sixty-two people. This was the golden age of commercial airflight—luxury in the skies—and safety was essential to the precarious future of air travel. So the FAA instructed the bird remains be sent to the Smithsonian Institution for examination, where 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, a heavy Carolina drawl, and a passion for birds. Roxie didn’t know it at the time, but that box full of dead birds marked the start of a remarkable scientific journey. She became the world’s first forensic ornithologist, investigating a range of crimes and calamites on behalf of the FBI, the US Air Force, and even NASA.
The Feather Detective takes readers deep within the vaunted backrooms of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History to tell the story of a burgeoning science and the enigmatic woman who pioneered it. While her male colleagues in taxidermy embarked on expeditions around the world and got plum promotions, Roxie stayed with her birds. Using nothing more than her microscope and bits of feathers, she helped prosecute murderers, kidnappers, and poachers. When she wasn’t testifying in court or studying evidence from capital crimes, she was helping aerospace engineers and Air Force crews as they raced to bird-proof their airplanes before disaster struck again.
In The Feather Detective, award-winning journalist Chris Sweeney charts the astonishing life and work of this overlooked pioneer. Once divorced, once widowed, and sometimes surly, Roxie shattered stereotypes and pushed boundaries. Her story is one of persistence and grit, obsession and ingenuity. Drawing on reams of archival material, court documents, and exclusive interviews, Sweeney delivers a moving and amusing portrait of a woman who overcame cultural and scientific obstacles at every turn, forever changing our understanding of birds—and the feathers they leave behind.
About the Author
Chris Sweeney is a nonfiction writer based in Somerville, Massachusetts. His debut book, The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, tells the remarkable true story of the Smithsonian scientist who pioneered forensic ornithology, using feathers to solve cases ranging from airplane crashes to wildlife crimes. The book was widely praised and named a must-read of summer 2025 by outlets including NPR, the Los Angeles Times, and Elle, with The Wall Street Journal calling it “a biography that reads like a novel.”
Sweeney’s career spans narrative journalism and global public health communications. He has written for publications such as Audubon, The Guardian, Wired, Popular Science, and Men’s Journal, and has held staff and editorial roles at Boston Magazine and Village Voice Media. A recipient of multiple journalism awards and reporting fellowships, Sweeney frequently explores the intersection of wildlife and society. He has also worked in global health communications with organizations including Partners In Health, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the AMR Action Fund.