Accidental Gravity is an essay collection that moves from the author's youth in upstate New York to the contemporary western United States, from urban and suburban places to wild lands. In the first section of the book, he focuses on suburban neighborhoods, ""the places where tensions between human and animal nature, and between differing concepts of the natural world, come to the fore."" In the second section, he juxtaposes these humanized places with Yellowstone National Park. Quetchenbach writes about current environmental issues in the Greater Yellowstone area—wildlife, forest insects, invasive species, ever-increasing numbers of tourists—in the context of climate change and other contemporary pressures.