Narrators Elyse Mirto and John H. Mayer add liveliness to Kiernan's moving story about healing and redemption. Deborah, an empathetic hospice nurse, is struggling with how to help her combat-wounded husband regain a foothold in their life together, while Barclay Reed, a discredited historian and curmudgeon, is struggling with how to die with dignity. Though the story is told from Deborah's perspective, Mirto's sensitive performance allows each character to grow in the listener's imagination. Her low, almost husky voice reveals a wide range of feeling, from competence to desperation, from passion to fear. At the end of each chapter, Mayer enters to narrate a second, related story. While the connection takes a few chapters to become clear, once it does, Mayer's baritone is a welcome addition. A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
The Hummingbird: A Novel
Narrated by Elyse Mirto, John H. Mayer
Stephen P. KiernanUnabridged — 11 hours, 1 minutes
The Hummingbird: A Novel
Narrated by Elyse Mirto, John H. Mayer
Stephen P. KiernanUnabridged — 11 hours, 1 minutes
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Overview
From the author of the acclaimed The Curiosity comes a compelling and moving story of compassion, courage, and redemption.
Deborah Birch is a seasoned hospice nurse whose daily work requires courage and compassion. But her skills and experience are tested in new and dramatic ways when her easygoing husband, Michael, returns from his third deployment to Iraq haunted by nightmares, anxiety, and rage. She is determined to help him heal, and to restore the tender, loving marriage they once had.
At the same time, Deborah's primary patient is Barclay Reed, a retired history professor and expert in the Pacific Theater of World War II whose career ended in academic scandal. Alone in the world, the embittered professor is dying. As Barclay begrudgingly comes to trust Deborah, he tells her stories from that long-ago war, which help her find a way to help her husband battle his demons.
Told with piercing empathy and heartbreaking realism, The Hummingbird is a masterful story of loving commitment, service to country, and absolution through wisdom and forgiveness.
Editorial Reviews
This many-faceted, thought-provoking story prompts soul-searching about life, war, and death.” — Booklist
“Remarkably touching, insightful and timely… bridges several powerful stories of life and death that explore the cost of courage and the true meaning of heroism… Illuminating, uplifting and ultimately redemptive.” — RT Book Reviews, 4.5 stars
“The Hummingbird is a novel that shares its unexpected gifts and teaches us that surrender is a part of love, and that giving away our weapons is the first step to peace.” — Mary Morris, author of The Jazz Palace
“Evocative and insightful . . . a wise and transformative novel that is psychologically astute and written in beautifully paced, expressive, and understated prose that is all the more poignant for its simplicity.” — San Francisco Review of Books
“Stephen Kiernan writes with surefooted mastery and patience. ...What thrilled me about The Hummingbird is that I learned again that sometimes an unbridgeable chasm can be crossed by a leap of the imagination.” — Peter Heller, author of The Painter and The Dog Stars
Praise for The Curiosity: “[THE CURIOSITY] poses provocative questions about life and humanity.” — Entertainment Weekly on THE CURIOSITY
““[A]mbitious . . . an emotionally satisfying and brisk narrative . . . [T]his is a gripping novel with a clever conceit.” — Publishers Weekly on THE CURIOSITY
“I absolutely loved THE CURIOSITY. It’s as thought-provoking and powerful as FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON and the writing is breathtakingly beautiful. And that ending? Poignant, luminescent, and absolutely perfect.” — Chris Bohjalian, bestselling author of The Light in the Ruins and Midwives
“If you want your beach read to deliver some goose bumps, snag Stephen P. Kiernan’s The Curiosity. In this romantic thriller, a man who’s been buried in Arctic ice for over a century is reanimated, with shocking results.” — Good Housekeeping
“One of the year’s great delights. . . . [A] beautifully made first work of fiction.” — Alan Cheuse, NPR
“Stephen P. Kiernan’s novel is a marvelous blend of sci-fi, romance, and the tug-of-war between science and ethics.” — Parade on THE CURIOSITY
“Summer is dominated with thrilling books, but if you prefer yours more measured, more touching and decidedly more thought-provoking, this one may satisfy your curiosity.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune on THE CURIOSITY
“Stephen P. Kiernan’s The Curiosity is a true page-turner, mixing cutting edge science with an all-too-human love story, while simultaneously taking on the Big Questions. It’s one of the most assured debuts in years, a book that will stop your heart and start it again.” — Justin Cronin, bestselling author of The Passage
“[A] smart, heady, and irresistable science thriller....Kiernan gets every element right in teh breakneck, entertaining and thought-provoking taleabout time, mortality, the ethics of science, and the meaning of life.” — Booklist (starred review) on THE CURIOSITY
This many-faceted, thought-provoking story prompts soul-searching about life, war, and death.
One of the year’s great delights. . . . [A] beautifully made first work of fiction.
Stephen Kiernan writes with surefooted mastery and patience. ...What thrilled me about The Hummingbird is that I learned again that sometimes an unbridgeable chasm can be crossed by a leap of the imagination.
Praise for The Curiosity: “[THE CURIOSITY] poses provocative questions about life and humanity.
I absolutely loved THE CURIOSITY. It’s as thought-provoking and powerful as FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON and the writing is breathtakingly beautiful. And that ending? Poignant, luminescent, and absolutely perfect.
Remarkably touching, insightful and timely… bridges several powerful stories of life and death that explore the cost of courage and the true meaning of heroism… Illuminating, uplifting and ultimately redemptive.
Evocative and insightful . . . a wise and transformative novel that is psychologically astute and written in beautifully paced, expressive, and understated prose that is all the more poignant for its simplicity.
The Hummingbird is a novel that shares its unexpected gifts and teaches us that surrender is a part of love, and that giving away our weapons is the first step to peace.
If you want your beach read to deliver some goose bumps, snag Stephen P. Kiernan’s The Curiosity. In this romantic thriller, a man who’s been buried in Arctic ice for over a century is reanimated, with shocking results.
Stephen P. Kiernan’s The Curiosity is a true page-turner, mixing cutting edge science with an all-too-human love story, while simultaneously taking on the Big Questions. It’s one of the most assured debuts in years, a book that will stop your heart and start it again.
Summer is dominated with thrilling books, but if you prefer yours more measured, more touching and decidedly more thought-provoking, this one may satisfy your curiosity.
[A] smart, heady, and irresistable science thriller....Kiernan gets every element right in teh breakneck, entertaining and thought-provoking taleabout time, mortality, the ethics of science, and the meaning of life.
Stephen P. Kiernan’s novel is a marvelous blend of sci-fi, romance, and the tug-of-war between science and ethics.
This many-faceted, thought-provoking story prompts soul-searching about life, war, and death.
[A] smart, heady, and irresistable science thriller....Kiernan gets every element right in teh breakneck, entertaining and thought-provoking taleabout time, mortality, the ethics of science, and the meaning of life.
Stephen P. Kiernan’s The Curiosity is a true page-turner, mixing cutting edge science with an all-too-human love story, while simultaneously taking on the Big Questions. It’s one of the most assured debuts in years, a book that will stop your heart and start it again.
Narrators Elyse Mirto and John H. Mayer add liveliness to Kiernan's moving story about healing and redemption. Deborah, an empathetic hospice nurse, is struggling with how to help her combat-wounded husband regain a foothold in their life together, while Barclay Reed, a discredited historian and curmudgeon, is struggling with how to die with dignity. Though the story is told from Deborah's perspective, Mirto's sensitive performance allows each character to grow in the listener's imagination. Her low, almost husky voice reveals a wide range of feeling, from competence to desperation, from passion to fear. At the end of each chapter, Mayer enters to narrate a second, related story. While the connection takes a few chapters to become clear, once it does, Mayer's baritone is a welcome addition. A.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
2015-06-17
A hospice nurse, baffled by her husband's drastic personality change after his third deployment to Iraq, gleans valuable lessons from a dying World War II historian. Deborah Birch, who has found her calling caring for dying patients in Portland, Oregon, is the only attendant retired professor Barclay Reed has not yet fired. She wins him over by showing an interest in his life's work, an unpublished treatise about the only Axis bombing to take place on American soil—in Oregon, when Ichiro Soga, a Japanese pilot, took off from a submarine in a light plane, bent on firebombing the state's famed virgin timber. Chapters from the treatise are interspersed throughout as Deb reads them to Barclay. Afflicted with terminal kidney cancer, Barclay also suffers from the blows life has dealt: his isolation from family and friends after his academic career ended due to a false accusation of plagiarism. Deb has another troubled soul to deal with at home, her husband, Michael, a Guardsman who survived his first two tours of duty in Iraq comparatively unscathed. After the third, however, he returned exhibiting full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder and has grown cold toward his wife and dangerously irascible. A skilled driver and car buff who works as a mechanic, he's now without wheels thanks to a road rage incident—police impounded his car after he pursued and rammed another driver for parking in a handicapped space. When Deb confides in Barclay, he tells her the key to unpacking the puzzle of Michael's trauma may lie in studying the code of a warrior. The story of Soga, a descendant of samurais, and his atonement for the bombing is the key to that understanding. The sections concerning Soga and his odd rapprochement with the Oregon town he attacked are often more engaging than the plights of the contemporary characters. Kiernan (The Curiosity, 2013) seeds this saga with occasional sanctimony, bald symbolism, and overly facile epiphanies. Tackles but ultimately oversimplifies thorny issues.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173778468 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/08/2015 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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