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Published Aug 2020
336 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
A heart-tugging and gorgeously written novel based on the incredible true story of a WWI messenger pigeon and the soldiers whose lives she forever altered, from the author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.
From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.
A saga of hope and duty, love and endurance, as well as the claustrophobia of fame, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a tragic yet life-affirming war story that the world has never heard. Inspired by true events of World War I, Kathleen Rooney resurrects two long-forgotten yet unforgettable figures, recounting their tale in a pair of voices that will change the way readers look at animals, freedom, and even history itself.
"Imaginative and audacious...Rooney uses Cher Ami's bird's-eye view and curious afterlife to exhilarating, comic, and terrifying effect, while Whit's tragic fate is exquisitely rendered...Unforgettable...A celebration of animal intelligence, and tribute to altruism and courage." - Booklist (starred review)
"Rooney's writing has a delicate lyricism; particularly vivid are passages describing the horrific sounds (and smells) of battle...A curiosity but richly imagined and genuinely affecting." - Kirkus Reviews
"Cher Ami...is often appealing, but the two decorated war heroes are often tiresome, whether explaining how pigeons can't understand human racism or the hollow life of a hero who couldn't save his men. Rooney's characters' tendency to belabor the obvious ultimately sinks the book." - Publishers Weekly
"You'll be amazed at the depths of character Rooney plumbs from a literal bird's-eye-view, and by how she entwines the voices of a messenger pigeon and a witty, disconsolate veteran to craft a story based on true events." - Chicago Magazine
"Hands down, one of the best books of the year. Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a magnificent achievement, and everything I want from a novel. I loved it." - J. Ryan Stradal, bestselling author of The Lager Queen of Minnesota
"A properly mysterious, warmly convincing work of bright imagination. A pigeon and a haunted man returned generously, gently, to the story of the world." - Sebastian Barry, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Days Without End
"Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a splendid novel; so smart, so beautifully written—a heroic tale of the cross-species relationship between pigeon and man during the Great War. Affecting and imaginative, this story vibrated deep in my heart because it all felt so very true." - Annie Hartnett, author of Rabbit Cake
"If you haven't yet discovered the offbeat genius of Kathleen Rooney, start here with a novel both heartbreaking and sharply funny. It justifies its own premise on the first page, and quickly surpasses that premise. Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is brilliant and surprising at every turn." - Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers
This information about Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press, a nonprofit publisher of literary work in hybrid genres, as well as a founding member of Poems While You Wait, a team of poets and their typewriters who compose commissioned poetry on demand. She teaches in the English Department at DePaul University, and her most recent books include the national best-seller, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk (St. Martin's Press 2017 / Picador 2018) and The Listening Room: A Novel of Georgette and Loulou Magritte (Spork Press, 2018). Her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, based on a true story of the Great War, will be published by Penguin in August of 2020.
A winner of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, she is the author of nine books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including...
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