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| Category: Fiction:Literary |
(requires Adobe Reader)
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| About the Book | |
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Marsha Mason, a successful, 51-year-old, English novelist, is suffering from both mid-life angst and writer’s block. She decides to spend a month in Italy in an attempt to move through her feelings of depression and to deal with the unsettling emotional changes of menopause. Lately, she has been finding herself increasingly haunted by painful memories from her past, particularly about the child she relinquished for adoption thirty years before. But in Italy, instead of escaping the pain, Marsha suddenly finds herself plunged even more deeply into it after a chance meeting with a man she never thought to see again. So she turns to a different kind of writing in order to lay these troublesome ghosts from her past. By then, she has met two other people who are destined to play an important part in her life. And it is through them that both Marsha and her long-lost daughter—whose own past contains an even more troubling ghost—find their way towards healing, personal growth and happiness. Every year, in Italy, millions of wild birds—including songbirds like thrushes, nightingales, wrens and robins—are caught in the illegal traps of poachers, where they hang by their broken legs, waiting to be strangled and sold to restaurants. Many more thousands of birds, particularly birds of prey, are shot every year for ‘sport’. Despite its title, this book is not about the slaughter of birds, though one of its main characters is involved in the battle to end this despicable practice. It is a tender love story, a story of healing, the mending of broken wings and the wisdom of women in the second half of their lives. Royalties from the sale of 'The Bird Menders' are donated to a non-profit organization called the Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli, whose hundreds of members, mostly volunteers, work tirelessly to foil the trappers and shooters, maintain reserves and rescue centers and improve the welfare of the precious and beautiful wild birds of Italy. So your purchase of this novel will be aiding a very good cause.
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| About the Author | |
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Marian is a retired psychologist and psychotherapist. She's also an editor, columnist, and author of four non-fiction books. She writes on wellness, women’s spirituality, ecopsychology, aging, environment, organic growing and simple living. Marian has also published short fiction, poetry and book reviews. 'The Bird Menders' is her first full-length novel. |