The Bird Skinner

On a weather-beaten island in Maine, a birder and WWII vet confronts his past in this "atmospheric and engrossing" novel (People).

 


After a recent leg amputation, ornithologist and World War II veteran Jim Kennoway retreats to an island in Penobscot Bay, off the coast of Maine. All he wants is to drink, smoke, and be left alone. From his perch, he listens for birdcalls and thinks back on his youth, his romance with his now deceased wife, his work for the American Museum of Natural History, and earlier, for Naval Intelligence in the South Pacific.


 


Thirty years ago, while stationed in the Solomon Islands, Jim befriended Tosca, a young islander who worked with him as a scout. Now Tosca has sent his daughter to stay with Jim before she begins premedical studies at Yale. She arrives to Jim's consternation, bringing with her a flood of troubling memories. Yet she will capture his heart and that of everyone she meets, irrevocably changing their lives.


 


Winner of the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction, Alice Greenway's second novel is "a beautiful, ultimately painful story as haunting as its settings" (Publishers Weekly).