I loved this book. The Mother's need to save every injured and neglected bird was so sad but also loving. The stories that she couldn't share with her daughter were lived through her actions. I thought this was a beautifully written book and I loved how every element however small it may have seemed at first was actually essential to the story and its resolution.

The characters were opened, raw and bleeding, stark under a bright light, much like the diseased and dying birds.
I was drawn to this book, but unsure exactly why. Maybe hope kept me going, but I was on some level grabbed by the understated power & intensitiy of this book.

This book kept you wondering where it was going next. The main characters were rich and flawed at the same time.

Ms. Brandeis, the author of the inspirational nonfiction book for writers, Fruitflesh, scores again with this uncommonly lovely and graceful story about Ava Sing Lo, a San Diego native who learns to save birds rather than killing them, and her mother, Helen, who grew up in Korea where she was used as a prostitute on a U.S. army base. There is redemption here that does not come easy, making it all the more worthwhile when it at last arrives.

The Book of Dead Birds is a story within a story, layered with dead birds, historical tragedy, and the hope for future flight no matter how deeply a bird has been wounded. Following the life of heroine Ava Sing Lo, in first-person present tense, this novel explores themes of race, exploitation, pollution, and indigenous cultural survival. The book includes excerpts from Ava's mother's journal, which is actually an encyclopedia of dead birds, revealing a voice that holds the burdens of witness, grief, anger and defeat, in single-page entries, here and there throughout the book. Lyrical & redemptive storytelling.