This Friday we’re bringing you a spectacularly vibrant, original debut, The Lovebird by Natalie Brown. Read The Lovebird excerpt here. The book takes us from the orange-scented streets of Southern California to the vast prairie landscape of Montana, and introduces us to Margie Fitzgerald, a spirited and unforgettable heroine for our times.
Margie has always had a soft spot for helpless creatures. Her warm heart breaks, her left ovary twinges, and she is smitten with sympathy. This is how she falls in love with Simon Mellinkoff, her charismatic, obviously troubled Latin professor. As the two embark on an unconventional romance, Simon introduces Margie to his small coterie of animal rights activists, and with this ragtag group she finds her apparent mission in life. But Margie’s increasingly reckless and dangerous actions force her to flee her California college town, say goodbye to her fragile dad, and seek shelter on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Here, against a backdrop of endless grass and sky, Margie meets a soap opera-loving grandmother, an intriguing, ink-splattered man, and an inscrutable eleven-year-old girl-and makes unexpected discoveries about her heart.
Request an eGalley of Lovebird.
The Lovebird will be released on June 18.
Readings
June 18th, 7 p.m. ~ Country Bookshelf, Bozeman, Montana ~ Reading and Book Signing
Sept. 10th, 7 p.m. ~ Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Iowa ~ Reading and Book Signing
Praise for Lovebird:
“The Lovebird is a compassionate and inviting novel about loneliness and heartbreak, finding a place to belong, and what we will do to protect the things we love. Brown evokes great emotion with her small and perfect details. The image of the lovebird-confused and lost-touched me to the core, and stayed with me long after I shut the book.” -Jennifer Close, bestselling author of Girls in White Dresses
“Natalie Brown has written a sly and quietly funny novel of a young woman’s coming of age. Her unusual heroine, Margie Fitzgerald, is a passionate innocent, a dreamer blessed with loopy confidence, charming directness, and a very American logic all her own.” -Honor Moore, author of The Bishop’s Daughter
“The Lovebird asks us what it means to love, to belong, to believe. It’s a book about new vision, second chances, and one young woman’s desire to find her place among her human-and animal-kin.” -Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men
Suffused with humor and compassion, The Lovebird is a radiant novel about one young woman’s love of animals, yearning for connection, and search for her place in this world.