Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Book of Dead Birds: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Book of Dead Birds: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Book of Dead Birds: A Novel
    Ebook311 pages3 hours

    Book of Dead Birds: A Novel

    By Gayle Brandeis

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Ava Sing Lo has been accidentally killing her mother's birds since she was a little girl. Now in her twenties, Ava leaves her native San Diego for the Salton Sea, where she volunteers to help environmental activists save thousands of birds poisoned by agricultural runoff.

    Helen, her mother, has been haunted by her past for decades. As a young girl in Korea, Helen was drawn into prostitution on a segregated American army base. Several brutal years passed before a young white American soldier married her and brought her to California. When she gave birth to a black baby, her new husband quickly abandoned her, and she was left to fend for herself and her daughter in a foreign country.

    With great beauty and lyricism, The Book of Dead Birds captures a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her mother's terrible past while she searches for her own place in the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061860324
    Unavailable
    Book of Dead Birds: A Novel
    Author

    Gayle Brandeis

    Gayle Brandeis is the author of  The Book of Dead Birds, the winner of Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, an award in support of a literature of social change. Reviewers have highly praised this, her first novel, and Toni Morrison said: "It has an edgy beauty that enhances perfectly the seriousness of its contents."  She is also the author. Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write. 

    Read more from Gayle Brandeis

    Related to Book of Dead Birds

    Related ebooks

    Asian American Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      California Dreaming

      Mar 31, 2020

      Rishi Reddi’s first novel, Passage West, is an audacious piece of work. On the one hand, the author situates her story in a California most of us won’t recognize: the Imperial Valley early in the previous century, when South Asians worked the irrigat

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kate Zambreno

      Dec 12, 2019

      I am at this point in my life where I find these lists voluptuous brags about time, which I have surely been party to in the past. The post A Year in Reading: Kate Zambreno appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Page One

      Dec 14, 2022

      “Ramón climbed up the Coca-Cola billboard near the highway one Monday.” How to Turn Into a Bird (Tin House, December 2022) by María José Ferrada, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer. Fifty-fifth book, second novel. Agent: Vito D’Onghia. Ed

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hello Possum: The New Zealanders Who Keep Wild Marsupials As Pets

      Jun 11, 2021

      Maurice likes to stay up all night. When he finally settles down at 5am, he makes sure everyone knows he’s there – then he curls up and sleeps all day. “When he’s ready to go to bed, he gives us a good face wash to say ‘hi,’” Jo Little* says, laughin

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter from Lafayette Square

      Dec 7, 2021

      One Sunday in February my mom telephones at eight in the morning to remind me that the bishop of Maryland is coming to Saint James at Lafayette Square, the African American Episcopal church where I was baptized and confirmed. There will be a single s

      15 min read

    • Article

      Making Tracks

      Apr 30, 2021

      Making Tracks
      8 min read

    • Article

      Killers Of The Flower Moon

      Oct 17, 2023

      Killers Of The Flower Moon
      7 min read

    • Article

      5 over 50

      Oct 10, 2018

      5 over 50
      12 min read

    • Article

      Hiking Into The Past

      Mar 1, 2022

      Hiking Into The Past
      10 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Dec 15, 2021

      “I like to think of myself as someone who continually questions truths,” writes Hasanthika Sirisena in their essay collection, Dark Tourist (Mad Creek Books, December). Sirisena does so, in part, by telling their own stories alongside those of other

      3 min read

    • Article

      How It Felt

      Sep 1, 2022

      How It Felt
      3 min read

    • Article

      Last Rites

      Sep 15, 2019

      It was a little past four in the afternoon, the light softer now and more diffuse, the intensity of the day’s heat beginning to wane, and standing by himself in a corner of the garden Krishan was observing the people gathered in Rani’s house for the

      30 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Aug 18, 2021

      In the past few years Aurielle Marie (they/she) says the manuscript that became their debut poetry collection, Gumbo Ya Ya (University of Pittsburgh Press, September 2021), grew more “wildly audacious.” After walking away from a book deal that didn’t

      4 min read

    • Article

      Back Draft: Sterling HolyWhiteMountain

      Jul 23, 2021

      The fiction writer discusses Native art, breakup phone calls, and the line between politics and propaganda.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Kate Braverman Is Dead

      Apr 5, 2022

      Kate Braverman Is Dead
      19 min read

    Reviews for Book of Dead Birds

    3.5/5

    3 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This overlooked first novel is very good, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Gayle Brandeis won Barbara Kingsolver's Bellwether Prize, and the back jacket carries an endorsement from Toni Morrison. Not at all bad for your first time out.The book moves back and forth between the story of a young Korean woman forced into prostitution on an American base, and her daughter by an unknown black serviceman. The title of the novel refers to the mother’s scrapbook memorializing the countless pet birds that her daughter has inadvertently slaughtered over the years. It's never 100% clear, actually, how accidental all the killings are. The daughter, Ava Sing Lo, is extraordinarily loyal to her mother, to the point of having internalized her mother's embarrassment and distance and turned them against herself, and so the unspoken possibility exists that the killings are unconscious acts of vengeance. The story, then, involves Ava's reclaiming of herself while simultaneously establishing common ground with her mother, on mutually supportive terms, for the first time in her life. The book also offers a terrific portrait of the communities surrounding southern California's Salton Sea, which is where Ava ransoms herself in the midst of a massive die-off of shorebirds.The language is wonderful, and the main characters are well drawn. There were a few points where the social message of the book threatened to hijack and eclipse the story, and there is one sub-plot involving a series of murders that is never adequately explained or resolved, but these are really minor criticisms, and I’d highly recommend the book. I’m especially interested in reading the author's future efforts. Her next novel is due out in early 2007, I believe. She has a website and her own blog. If she can win the marketing game and get the attention she deserves, I think she may be at the beginning of a very promising career.

      1 person found this helpful