THE NATURE OF SMALL BIRDS

BY SUSIE FINKBEINER

Publisher: Revell

Pub Date: July 6, 2021

Pages: 368 pages

Categories: Fiction / Christian / General

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In 1975, three thousand children were airlifted out of Saigon to be adopted into Western homes. When Mindy, one of those children, announces her plans to return to Vietnam to find her birth mother, her loving adopted family is suddenly thrown back to the events surrounding her unconventional arrival in their lives.

Though her father supports Mindy’s desire to meet her family of origin, he struggles privately with an unsettling fear that he’ll lose the daughter he’s poured his heart into. Mindy’s mother undergoes the emotional rollercoaster inherent in the adoption of a child from a war-torn country, discovering the joy hidden amid the difficulties. And Mindy’s sister helps her sort through relics that whisper of the effect the trauma of war has had on their family–but also speak of the beauty of overcoming.

Told through three strong voices in three compelling timelines, The Nature of Small Birds is a hopeful story that explores the meaning of family far beyond genetic code.

“Susie Finkbeiner has such an inviting and distinctive voice as a writer that you’ll gladly follow it–and follow her–to any setting.”–Valerie Fraser Luesse, Christy Award-winning author of Under the Bayou Moon

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Excerpt from Chapter One of

The Nature of Small Birds

By Susie Finkbeiner

Bruce, 2013

No matter how the world has changed over the course of my life, somehow crayons still smell the way they did when I was a kid. A fresh pack of Crayolas sits open on the kitchen table, and I roll the one called “Macaroni and Cheese” between thumb and finger.

My youngest granddaughter sits next to me at the table, coloring heart shapes and smiley faces all over her piece of printer paper. We’re busy making cards for her great-grammy—my mother—whose birthday is over the weekend. So far Evie’s got more wax on the page than I do.

“How old is Great-Grammy gonna be?” Evie asks, switching to a light shade of brown.

“Eighty-five,” I say.

She looks up from her coloring to give me a drop-jawed look. “That’s really old.”

“Well, let’s not say that to her, all right?” I give her a wink.

Evie gives me a thumbs-up before going back to her work.

Boy, do I love spending time with this girl.

“You’re doing a good job,” I say, tilting my head to look at her picture.

“Thanks,” she says. “Do you think Great-Grammy will like it?”

“Of course she will.”

A gust comes in through the open window, making the corner of Evie’s paper flicker just a little bit. Outside, the tops of the trees sway and the leaves that have already fallen to the ground ride the wind across the yard.

Man, do I love fall in Michigan.

I fit my crayon back in its place between the deep orange and goldenrod yellow. “You know what. I’m getting thirsty.”

“Me too,” she says, letting her shoulders slump as if she’s been laboring over that card all day.

“How about I make us some hot cocoa?” I narrow my eyes at her. “Would that be all right with you?”

That gets her to perk up right away, and she tells me, “Yes, please.”

As soon as the weather drops below sixty degrees, Linda makes sure we’re well stocked with the fixings for hot cocoa. The mix, marshmallows, the works. Our oldest, Sonny, likes to point out that it wasn’t this way when she was a little girl. I like to remind her that we weren’t grandparents then.

I hardly get the cupboard open to pick two mugs before I hear a thunk on the window. A quick look and I see a little sparrow, unmoving, on the grass, wings splayed on either side. Its head is turned at a funny angle.

“What was that?” Evie asks, eyebrows scrunched together.

“You stay right there,” I say by way of answering. “I’ll go check it out.”

I rush to the family room and push open the sliding door, stepping out onto the patio.

The late morning has a hint of chill to it as if to remind me that winter isn’t as far away as I might like to think. I wish I’d slipped on a pair of shoes. Socked feet aren’t always the surest, especially on leaf-covered grass. Last thing I need is to fall, especially while I’m supposed to be taking care of Evie. At my age—sixty-ahem years old—it’s not so easy to recover from a tumble.

Trying my best not to startle the bird—a house sparrow—I lower myself, pressing one knee into the ground, hoping to see a sign of life.

“Grandpa?” Evie’s on the other side of the window, fingers curled and pressed against her cheeks. “Is it dead?”

“I don’t think so, honey,” I say, smiling at her. “How about you see if Grandma has a dry washcloth in the drawer. All right?”

She nods, but the look in her eyes says she’s feeling more than a little bit worried. By the time she comes out, cloth in hand, the sparrow’s managed to get herself sitting up.

“She’ll be fine in a few minutes,” I say, as calm and gentle as I can.

I use the washcloth to pick up the sparrow. She rests in my cupped hands, and I resist the temptation to run the tip of a finger over her feathers. They look like they’d be soft to the touch.

But birds like this one are wild, not meant for the affections of humans. Instead, I just watch her, hoping she recovers from the shock she’s had this morning.

“‘There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,’” I whisper after a minute.

“What’s that mean?” she asks.

“Well, it’s from a play called Hamlet,” I say, noticing how the sparrow blinks at the sound of my voice. “It just means that God sees everything and cares, even if it’s just a little critter smacking into a window.”

Evie doesn’t take her eyes off the bird and doesn’t give me any indication that she understands. That’s all right. Sometimes I have a tough time comprehending it too.

The sparrow gives a little tremble, and I make a shushing sound like the one I always made when comforting one of my girls when they fell off their bikes or stubbed a toe.

“That’s it,” I say when she tries her wings, stretching them with a little twitch. Keeping them spread, she gives a tiny, tentative hop.

Then a second hop with a bit more certainty.

“Can we keep her?” Evie asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m afraid not, honey.” I shake my head. “She wouldn’t like being a pet, I don’t think. She needs to be free.”

I flatten my hands, hoping to give the sparrow a better surface to take off from. She’s hardly an ounce; I barely notice the weight of her at all. But when she pushes off to fly, saying goodbye with a little trill, I miss how she felt in my hands.

We watch her go, Evie and me, until we lose her in the branches of the ancient sycamore at the far end of the yard.

My sweet girl lowers her head to my shoulder, and her sniffles let me know that she’s crying. Well, I feel like crying too, just for a different reason.

“I wanted to keep her,” she says.

“I kind of did too,” I say. “But it wouldn’t have been good for her.”

“Will we ever see her again?”

“We might.” I put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head.

I look back toward the spot where I last saw that bird, not saying that house sparrows are a dime a dozen, if that.

Still, it’s something to see them fly.

Click here to read all of CHAPTER ONE

Susie Finkbeiner is the CBA bestselling author of All Manner of Things, which was selected as a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, and Stories That Bind Us, as well as A Cup of Dust, A Trail of Crumbs, and A Song of Home. She serves on the Fiction Readers Summit planning committee, volunteers her time at Ada Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and speaks at retreats and women’s events across the country. Susie and her husband have three children and live in West Michigan.

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