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Published Apr 2011
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Love is timeless. So too is heartbreak.
Whenever a bird flies into a window in Spring Green, Wisconsin, sisters Milly and Twiss get a visit. Twiss listens to the birds' heartbeats, assessing what she can fix and what she can't, while Milly listens to the heartaches of the people who've brought them. The two sisters have spent their lives nursing people and birds back to health.
But back in the summer of 1947, Milly was known as a great beauty with emerald eyes and Twiss was a brazen wild child who never wore a dress or did what she was told. That was the summer their golf pro father got into an accident that cost him both his swing and his charm, and their mother, the daughter of a wealthy jeweler, finally admitted their hardscrabble lives wouldn't change. It was the summer their priest, Father Rice, announced that God didn't exist and ran off to Mexico, and a boy named Asa finally caught Milly's eye. And most unforgettably, it was the summer their cousin Bett came down from a town called Deadwater and changed the course of their lives forever.
BookBrowse Says
"Rebecca Rasmussen’s first novel, The Bird Sisters, is a literary, though not quite as gentle as it would seem, tale of the power of family ties. The narrative alternates between the present, where two elderly sisters live together on their parents' property and the past, when one summer of their youth proved unexpectedly eventful and consequential. Rasmussen's characters are quirky and her ability to write scenes of marital and parent/child tension is first rate. However, the novel's plot is lacking a certain cohesive satisfaction: that staying power created when all of the pieces of a story fit together, creating sense and understanding in the reader's mind. Some characters' motives are unclear and the sisters' care for injured birds (as referenced in the title) is under-used and under-explained. Despite these complaints, the author's talent with words is evident and one hopes there will be more books from Rasmussen to come." - Stacey Rae Brownlie
Other Reviews
"Achingly authentic and almost completely character driven, the story of the sisters depicts the endlessly binding ties of family." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Rasmussen's debut novel is full of grace and humanity. Her heroines are fearless and romantic, endearing and engaging, and her poetic prose creates an almost magical, wholly satisfying world." - Library Journal
"A good-natured, leisurely, sometimes fanciful but fresh first work." - Kirkus Reviews
"A magical debut, original and poignant, lovely and moving. The Bird Sisters evokes the richly imaginative joys of childhood and the throat-aching betrayals and loyalties of being an adult. I absolutely loved The Bird Sisters and will carry Milly and Twiss with me as if in a locket for a long, long time." - Jenna Blum, bestselling author of Those Who Save Us
"What a book - unique, beautifully written, vivid and heartbreaking. I loved it. With evocative and finely wrought prose, Rebecca Rasmussen has crafted a moving story that explores the fierce bonds, wounds, and tender complexities of the human heart. The Bird Sisters is a magical debut." - Beth Hoffman, bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
This information about The Bird Sisters 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.
Rebecca Rasmussen is the author of the novels The Bird Sisters and Evergreen. Her stories have appeared in or won prizes from TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, The Mid-American Review, among other journals. She was born and raised in the Midwest. Currently, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter and teaches English part-time at UCLA.
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