Helen is an amateur bird watcher and naturalist who lives in a rural community in Wales. When a local farmer Bill tells Helen that a â?orare birdâ? named Emrys killed himself at Cuddig farm, she decides to investigate. One of the dogs at the farm tells her, by way of explanation, that Emrys â?ohad no feathers and couldnâ??t fly.â? She plucks an old cosmetic kit from a dumpster and discovers it belonged to Emrys. Inventorying the kitâ??s contents, she finds a spent .12 gauge shotgun shell. Her attempt to learn more about Emrys turns into a journey of self-discovery and ultimately a hard-fought reconciliation with the world â?" as it is. Carol Swainâ??s Gast is the rare kind of contemporary graphic novel critics are conjuring when they exult over the promise of the art formâ?" a philosophically mature vision, uniquely executed by an artist wholly in control of her craft. In Gast, Helenâ??s inner life is slowly revealed through a mixture of naturalistic detail and phantasmagoric occurrences.