Winner of the 2020 IPPY Silver Medal for Literary Fiction; Winner, 2020 The Miramichi Reader's "Very Best" Book Awards for Fiction

Matthew Reilly is a busy academic, a lonely priest haunted by secrets. Young Alison is the shy and devoted keeper of Daisy, a falcon which suffered an accident and can no longer fly. The three of them meet in a Boston parish, but Matt has forgotten a momentary but disturbing meetup with Alison, homeless eight years earlier in Toronto. Close to exhaustion, he's forced to reflect on what's become of his life, including the loss of a son that no one knew he'd fathered. Alison and Matt had a fateful encounter during her homeless period, but Matt doesn't connect that frail teenager with the healthy young woman she'd become. It's left to Alison to uncover Matt's past and for Matt to come to terms with it.

Born and raised in the New York City area, Carole Giangrande now resides in Toronto. Her novella, A Gardener on the Moon, was co-winner of the 2010 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest. She is the author of two novels, An Ordinary Star (2004) and A Forest Burning (2000) and a short story collection, Missing Persons (1994), as well as two non-fiction books: Down To Earth: The Crisis in Canadian Farming (1985) and The Nuclear North: The People, The Regions and the Arms Race (1983). Her most recent novella, Midsummer, was published to literary acclaim in 2014. She’s worked as a broadcast journalist for cbc Radio, and her fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in literary journals and in Canada’s major newspapers. While revising new work, she now comments as The Thoughtful Blogger (a space for interesting books and intermittent reflection), available through her website at http://www.carolegiangrande.com

Carole Giangrande's profile page

• Winner, Silver IPPY Award (Literary Fiction)

"The spirit of brokenness and its redemption lie at the heart of Carole Giangrande's brilliant, at times shattering, novel. Here, human brutality gives way to an abiding hope in the unseen order that binds all of creation, in a physical world at once sacred and profane. A glorious expression of Giangrande's deeply spiritual vision, The Tender Birds is a rare and riveting fusion of 'the poetry of things imagined,' gorgeously distilled prose, urgency, and exquisite plotting--a literary page-turner of the highest order. I'm in awe of Giangrande's work and the reassuring wisdom that suffuses it, wisdom our world badly needs right now."
--Carol Bruneau, author of A Circle on the Surface, A Bird on Every Tree, These Good Hands and several other novels.

"With breathtaking language and gentle insights, this quietly beautiful book gives us good people struggling with the mute loneliness imposed by secrets. Through her characters' love for that most ancient of birds--the falcon--Giangrande takes us into the mysteries of faith, forgiveness and the search for peace. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, a joy to read, the novel lingers long after its close."
-- Irene Guilford, author of Waiting For Stalin To Die

"A true page turner, illuminated by beauty as well as dirty realism, the story is especially evocative in these days of the Me Too movement, and the many revelations in recent years of the sinister issues attached to the Catholic Church. As someone who considers herself an ex-Catholic, I found myself in awe of the head-on confrontations with the Church that Giangrande evokes through her characters. The book is timely and sensitive. It raises questions. Written tenderly, without anger, Giangrande nonetheless won't let us look away. She compels us to contemplate and understand the details of how suffering happens. This is a serious and illiminating story, timely and useful for us all. And here is yet another terrific novel by Carole Giangrande, an author who knows how to turn over the haunting, terrifying actions of our world in her able hands, knows how to lift them up, and to let them take flight in art."
--Jocelyn Cullity, author of The Envy of Paraise and Amah and the Silk-Winged Pigeons

"Not magical realism, but piercingly real magic; wounds and revelations are Carole Giangrande's canvas. An award-winning novelist, Giangrande moves her vivid characters deftly through darkness and light, chiaroscuro. I found it hard to close the last page on people and birds who entered my life through this tender, poignant novel."
--Mary Corkery, author of Simultaneous Windows