Dead Horse Bay

In Dead Horse Bay, John Dyson's novel, three unlikely characters plan to rescue the geese that molt near Kennedy Airport from being killed.   The geese are in danger because a goose has collided with an airplane at New York's, La Guardia Airport and all geese living within a 7-mile radius of La Guardia Airport are to be killed.

The novel is named after the place where the action starts out and this is also the place where the action ends.  Dead Horse Bay, is a small bay within Jamaica Bay and Jamaica Bay extends inland to Kennedy Airport.  Dead Horse Bay earned its name because of the dead city horses that New York City dumped there in the 1800s.  

The three characters rescuing the geese are Marty, Tanisha and Don.  Marty, at age 73, has initially little interest in rescuing geese, until he realizes that a goose rescue would be payback for the damage that airport construction did to the bay when he was a kid. Tanisha, at age 26, is student at Brooklyn Law School and has become involved with "Goose Watch" a local environmental group that is run by a fellow student. Don is a reformed duck hunter, who in the past has shot ducks and geese.  Don still owns a shotgun, but now he finds it difficult to pull the trigger.

Probably, the best comp (comparable title) is Edward Abbeys novel called The Monkey Wrench Gang, but this is a gentler novel. Marty, though, does idolize George Washington Hayduke, one of Abbeys characters, and he show this by littering Jamaica Bay with beer cans. But, unlike Hayduke with his brawn, Marty realizes early on that he will have to use psychology and cunning if he is going to succeed with the goose rescue.