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Title: Rare Birds

Author: Kathleen Novak

Narrator: Christa Lewis

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins

Language: English

Release date: 06-30-17

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

On the very edge of nowhere, prospectors long ago found iron ore and mined it, and workers traveled from all over the world to settle and make their homes there. It is against this historical backdrop that the people live out their desires and unfinished stories in the early summer of 1960.

Betty Larsen, raising her lover's daughter on her own, waits impatiently for him to return. Skinny old Gertrude, who rounds the block headlong a dozen times a day, hears the bugs beneath the cut grass and the hysteria of a new season happening. And on the next block, Nicky Marodi, just returned from a state hospital for the mentally ill, lurches along in his new freedom. It is the first day of summer vacation, and the trees have blossomed in the brightest green.

Meanwhile, three neighborhood girls band together to explore an abandoned house, where they find mysteries in every room: half-packed boxes, what looks like blood, and the mementos of lives they try to imagine. But theirs is not the only mystery.

In fact mysteries and secrets abound. Betty's lover does not return. Gertrude suddenly experiences a longing she has never known. The girls encounter glints of magic that change each of them unexpectedly, even as a band of marauding teenage hoodlums invade their block and as Nicky lands in jail and the old Italians tend their gardens, claiming the land as their own.

A poetic and luscious paean of a particular place and time, Rare Birds interweaves the stories of these odd and dear characters, who could not have guessed they would be so well remembered.

Members Reviews:

Great Read

In a few blocks of a mining town in Northern Minnesota set in 1960, the lives of some of its occupiers intermingled into a delightful, fast moving book. A joy to read as you begin to discover these wonderful charactes!

Realist remembrance.

I.A truly accurate description of life in northern MN in the 60's! Enjoyed re-walking the streets of my youth, remembering the 3rd Avenue neighborhood, and smiling about some of our more colorful residents! Nice read. I truly enjoyed the story.

Small town stories brought to life

Loved this story of small town characters and their interior lives. Well told. I finished it a couple of weeks ago and keep âvisitingâ the characters in my mind.

Iron Range Americana

One can imagine the author's quandary in selecting a title for this book. She presents us with a neighborhood in a small northern Minnesota mining town that was torn apart a few generations earlier by the discovery of iron ore underÂits northern section. The introduction tells this part of the story so smoothly and is so well written that it is, in itself, worth the price of admission.

Now, generations later, we are introduced to a single neighborhood in the remade town. There are, indeed, some rare birds in this neighborhood. There are people who are not capable of self-careÂand must be looked after. But the author shows that even normal people, the non-strange, are constantly seeking to belong - to have a social group where they are not strange and can be accepted.