The Bird Sisters, the debut novel of local author Rebecca Rasmussen, is truly something to crow about. Elderly sisters Twiss and Milly are known as the Bird Sisters in their small hometown of Spring Green, Wisconsin, where they have lived their whole lives. People bring them injured birds; they do what they can to heal them, and listen to the tales of the people that drove down their windy road in order to try to fix something that may or may not be fixable.
The story is told throughout a day near the end of their lives, as one morning a woman and her children bring them an injured goldfinch, one that cannot be healed. Their interaction ignites memories for Milly:
Her will was met with the facts of history, which she blamed the mother for dredging up this morning. Only a woman without children. A woman without children…The truth was that the past and the present, hope and actuality, had been rubbing up against each other, and against Milly, before the arrival of the minivan. Instead of time continuing forward as it typically did, lately time had begun leaping about as it pleased, unsettling all that had been settled years ago.
Much of the rest of the book is told through flashbacks to the summer of 1947, a life-changing summer in which teenagers Twiss (the “wild one”) and Milly (the “pretty one”) struggle with family: parents that fight with each other and wrestle personal demons, and a sickly yet bold cousin, Bett, who comes to visit and disrupts their connection to each other. It is also a summer filled with ruined dreams, existential questionings, burdgeoning love and poetically ordinary lives. Rasmussen’s obvious intimacy with her characters (they are loosely based on her grandmother and great aunt) breathes such life into them, each voice is perfectly defined, whether her characters speak as teenager or septuagenarians. And the language of the book is lovely to sit with.
Rebecca Rasmussen launches her debut novel, The Bird Sisters,at the Downtown Left Bank Books (321 N. 10th) on Thursday, April 21, at 7 p.m. For more information, go to left-bank.com.
