A surprisingly joyful, hopeful little story about the power of nature, and specifically birds, to heal us when we are hurt. After losing a child the narrator finds herself drawn to the birds of the New Zealand bush and their songs.
Helen is a writer of fiction and non-fiction who usually lives in a house in Naenae, sometimes on a boat in Seaview, and hardly ever but with great enthusiasm in a yurt in Wainuiomata. She studied linguistics and psychology at Victoria University, then taught English as a second language for 20 years in Ireland, England, Japan, China, and New Zealand. She has travelled through 30 countries, mostly by train, and is good at studying a new language in the carriage before crossing the border, and forgetting it completely on the journey out. She's interested in cross cultural communication and dialects; especially subtle differences between speakers of the same language.
