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a wise, sly, and beautifully written novel ... --Annie Dillard
Scribner
April 2006
256 pages
ISBN: 074328738X
Hardcover
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Fiction | Literature and Fiction
One fall night off the coast of a remote island in Nova
Scotia, an airplane plummets to the sea as an innkeeper
watches from the shore. Miles away in New York City,
ornithologist Ana Gathreaux works in a darkened room full of
sparrows, testing their migratory instincts. Soon, Ana will
be bound for Trachis Island, along with other relatives of
victims who converge on the site of the tragedy. As the search for survivors envelops the island, the
mourning families gather at the inn, waiting for news of
those they have lost. Here among strangers, and watched over
by innkeeper Kevin Gearns, they form an unusual community,
struggling for comfort and consolation. A Taiwanese couple
sets out fruit for their daughter's ghost. A Bulgarian man
plays piano in the dark, sending the music to his lost wife,
a cellist. Two Dutch teenagers, a brother and sister, rage
against their parents' death. An Iranian exile, mourning his
niece, recites the Persian tales that carry the wisdom of
centuries. At the center of Birds in Fall lies Ana Gathreaux, whose
story Brad Kessler tells with deep compassion: from her days
in the field with her husband, observing and banding
migratory birds, to her enduring grief and gradual
reengagement with life. Kessler's knowledge of the natural world, music, and myth
enriches every page of this hauntingly beautiful and moving
novel about solitude, love, losing your way, and finding
something like home.
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