A gorgeous, deeply felt debut novel about obsession, loneliness, and the surprising ways we find to connect with each other. Henry Jett’s life is slowly going nowhere. His girlfriend recently left, and his job in a local garage is uninspiring, considering that he doesn’t particularly like cars. Henry finds solace in his eccentric passion, rebuilding the skeletons of birds and animals. Meanwhile Henry’s brother, Dan, is disappearing into an obsession of his own. Without Dan to rely on, Henry begins to engage in new ways with the people around him in his Prairie city: the 80-year-old Russian émigré who delights in telling stories; the very pregnant former employee of his mother’s; the lawyer who may or may not be his brother’s ex-girlfriend. Gradually they demand that Henry become a participant in his own story, and Henry must forge his own way of living in the world. In The Afterlife of Birds, award-winning poet Elizabeth Philips draws together unforgettable characters who subtly, powerfully demonstrate the beauty of ordinary lives and finding our place in the world.

Elizabeth Philips has been writing professionally for thirty-five years and is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Torch River (Brick Books). She has won a National Magazine Award, an Alberta Magazine Award, and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She has edited over forty books of poetry and fiction and has been the Director of the Banff Centre's Writing with Style program since 2010. She lives in Saskatoon with her partner and two Cairn Terriers. The Afterlife of Birds is her first novel.

Elizabeth Philips' profile page

• Winner, Saskatoon Book Award
• Short-listed, Amazon.ca First Novel Award

“Philips’ novel is a gift, her prose flawless, her characters endlessly engaging; the book itself offering us a new voice in fiction, one we should listen to with all our hearts.”

Patrick Lane

“Liz Philips has accomplished the most difficult thing in literature. She has written an original love story.”

Fred Stenson