The Sparrow's Last Call

Eight-year-old Lily Marsh is fighting pneumonia from her bedroom in a small Ohio town, and she has decided that the sparrow outside her window is the most important creature in the world. She named him Henry—after O. Henry, the writer of surprise endings—because he stayed in the elm tree after all his fledglings flew away. She has tracked his morning song in her sketchbook. And she is certain, with the certainty only a sick child can have, that as long as Henry keeps singing, she is going t...