young adult

Silhouette of a Sparrow

A first novel for young adults that wonderfully evokes the historical period of the 1920s, a love of birding, and a girl’s coming-of-age and sexual awareness.

I was born blue. Life ripped me early from my safe place and thrust me into the world. It was all so astonishing that I forgot to breathe. . . . My mother gave me life that day, but I was the one who decided to take it. I claimed it for myself.

So begins the story of Garnet Richardson. A robin singing on the windowsill helped revive her at birth, so the tale is told, and from that moment on, Garnet has had a special relationship to birds. But by the age of twelve, she replaces tree-climbing and exploring birds’ nests with cutting silhouettes and needlepoint, at the insistence of her mother.  That all changes when Garnet is allowed to spend the summer with well-to-do relatives in the 1926 Minnesota vacation spot of Excelsior, where a new amusement park has recently been built and a large dance hall beckons, both to the dismay of Garnet’s summer guardian, Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Harrington and her daughter, Hannah, are not to be her vacation companions, however. Garnet soon convinces her elders that a summer job is the right activity for a girl of sixteen. One first taste of freedom leads to others, back to the pleasures of nature, and eventually to the pleasures of the company of another young woman, Isabella. Though her beau, Teddy, waits for Garnet’s return and their expected engagement, Garnet discovers a love unlike anything she’s experienced before, but with a girl, “a harlot” as Hannah calls her. Garnet must decide the course her life will take, despite her parents’ wishes, despite the prevailing norms.

Published by Milkweed Editions
August 6, 2013
paperback  |  pages: 206
genre: young adult
ISBN  978-1-57131-701-8

Silhouette of a Sparrow

A first novel for young adults that wonderfully evokes the historical period of the 1920s, a love of birding, and a girl’s coming-of-age and sexual awareness.

I was born blue. Life ripped me early from my safe place and thrust me into the world. It was all so astonishing that I forgot to breathe. . . . My mother gave me life that day, but I was the one who decided to take it. I claimed it for myself.

So begins the story of Garnet Richardson. A robin singing on the windowsill helped revive her at birth, so the tale is told, and from that moment on, Garnet has had a special relationship to birds. But by the age of twelve, she replaces tree-climbing and exploring birds’ nests with cutting silhouettes and needlepoint, at the insistence of her mother.  That all changes when Garnet is allowed to spend the summer with well-to-do relatives in the 1926 Minnesota vacation spot of Excelsior, where a new amusement park has recently been built and a large dance hall beckons, both to the dismay of Garnet’s summer guardian, Mrs. Harrington.

Mrs. Harrington and her daughter, Hannah, are not to be her vacation companions, however. Garnet soon convinces her elders that a summer job is the right activity for a girl of sixteen. One first taste of freedom leads to others, back to the pleasures of nature, and eventually to the pleasures of the company of another young woman, Isabella. Though her beau, Teddy, waits for Garnet’s return and their expected engagement, Garnet discovers a love unlike anything she’s experienced before, but with a girl, “a harlot” as Hannah calls her. Garnet must decide the course her life will take, despite her parents’ wishes, despite the prevailing norms.