Byrd
“A love story for a lost child.”—[PANK]
Addie Lockwood believes in books. Roland Rhodes believes in blues guitar. Coming of age in the small-town South of the 1970s, they form an extraordinary if unlikely friendship.
They meet again in their disillusioned thirties, this time in California, where Roland’s music career has led him. Venice Beach is a world away from North Carolina and Addie’s cloistered life as a bookstore clerk.
When their whirlwind reunion ends in Addie’s becoming pregnant, reality sets in. Overwhelmed and uncertain of herself, Addie gives birth to a son—Byrd—and surrenders him for adoption without telling Roland, little imagining how the secret will shape their lives.
Told through letters and sharply drawn vignettes, Byrd is a story about making and living with the most difficult, intimate, and far-reaching of choices.
Praise & Reviews
“Unforgettable and gripping.”
—BookPage
“At its root Byrd is about heartbreak, loss, and being lonely. The triumph here is that Kim Church’s remarkable skill turns these dark human realities into the stuff of praise song, and plain song, and blues song. It made me shout and holler. What a truly lyrical achievement in prose.”
—Randall Kenan, author of A Visitation of Spirits
“Kim Church conveys loss and longing with deft economy in prose that is spare but lovely. On every page, Church’s debut novel is about people missing each other.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A deeply moving story of family, of love and disappointments, and of the confusing simplicity of life.”
—Bustle
“A riveting debut.”
—Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker
“Startlingly honest and so well-written it will bleed the ink from your underlining pen.”
—Travis Mulhauser, author of Fair Chase
“Beautiful, dream-like language … connects us directly with the experience of the characters. It goes right to the heart, without being filtered through the brain, the way a smell connects you to a memory.”
—Nancy Peacock, author of Wildwood
“Kim Church has imagined a world of good people missing the mark as good people sometimes do. They’re familiar, a comfort. I will never forget the impact of the final pages.”
—Patricia Henley, author of Apple & Palm
“This protagonist is so appealing, with her unflinching moral candor, her mistakes based on generous instincts. The prose is lilting, joyous. This novel — about young lives that start out full of promise, falter, then recover — is a hard-luck story that will make you feel good.”
—Debra Monroe, author of It Takes a Worried Woman
“This is one of those rare books that is compulsively readable and a work of art.”
—Angela Davis Gardner, author of Butterfly’s Child
Awards
Crook’s Corner Book Prize
IPPY Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction
Chautauqua Prize finalist
Balcones Fiction Prize finalist
Center for Fiction First Novel Award longlist
SIBA Book Award longlist
Top Twelve Southern Picks for Book Clubs, Charlotte Observer
Best Books of 2014: Raleigh News & Observer, Charlotte Observer, Wake County Public Libraries (a book club kit selection)
A Bloggers Recommend Pick
Author of the Year, Duke University Libraries Book Club
Book trailer: Annmarie Woods and Joshua Zimmerer, student project, Wichita State University