This is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel about an obsessed, driven, mythical, problematic man who achieved so much over his lifetime that the book doesn’t claim to cover it all. (For example, illustrations of Audubon’s confused nightmares only hint at his birth circumstances.) Even so, when his death arrives, I was almost shocked at his relatively young age considering all he’d done.

The work stays away from any controversy whatsoever, admitting that its retelling is a romanticized version based on Audubon’s own writings. As to his owning of enslaved people (mentioned in the endnotes as a topic deserving of its own book, which I don’t think is a good excuse to not include it), the depiction of Audubon encountering a runaway in a swamp outside of New Orleans doesn’t purport at all to do what the writers say it does. Audubon’s killing of birds in order to paint them (his hunting is sometimes also for eating), a casually accepted and essential component of his practice, is necessarily included.

The art is at its amazing best when the birds are depicted as plentiful in the sky, in the trees, on the shores. Audubon laments over what’s been lost to colonialism and expansion, and the reader can easily extrapolate and understand how much more has been lost through today.