Listen to an excerpt from The Write Questions on KUFM - Montana Public Radio. During this program, William J. Cobb talks about and reads from his novel ‘The Bird Saviors.’ He also gives some background information about his research into the government’s Department of Nuisance Animals.
Listen to all Unbridled Aloud podcasts
“…The Bird Saviors has a surprisingly soft heart. Its characters are misfits, losers and outcasts, but they’re also closet romantics, searching for love in the harsh Colorado landscape.…a comedic yarn worthy of the big screen.” - Dallas Morning News
“All the characters in this terrific book, even the tangential ones, are vividly realized . . . Cobb’s observational powers are as well-honed as his language, which is both durable and dazzling . . . The Bird Saviors is ultimately a hopeful work of fiction meant to be savored and read again, a poignant reminder of great literature’s power to reflect our lives — our hopes and disappointments, expectations and dreams.” - San Antonio Express News
“Cobb has obviously figured out how to combine fine writing and suspense without straining credulity…. an oddly affirming book.”— Houston Chronicle
“..The Bird Saviors is an immersing and emotional piece of literature… In a voice reminiscent of Charles Frazier’s, The Bird Saviors tells a fascinating story of success in spite of chaos, opportunity in spite of despair, and love in spite of hate. – Booklist
“powerful” - Library Journal
“Weaving a biblical motif with social, political, economic, and environmental undertones, he does a yeoman’s job of bringing together complex themes in a touching and memorable tale that readers won’t soon forget. It’s Cobb’s prose, in particular, that breathes life into this tumultuous terrain, his every sentence dulcet in the discordance. . .To say The Bird Saviors is “amazing” is also to shortchange Cobb. For his is a timeless story of love and redemption, a classic tale of good vs. evil, and a can’t-miss page-turner that leaves readers wanting more.”—Foreword
“Bill Cobb’s The Bird Saviors is a stark modern-day Old Testament story in which the evil that men do is barely balanced by the good that a few manage to achieve. It’s a gritty harrowing story set in a dust-blown Colorado town that seems filled with vivid characters. Cobb’s expert story-telling compels us forward scene by scene to a final satisfying redemption.” –Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong
“A novel told with an unexpected and appealing warmth; the characters in The Bird Saviors become increasingly memorable, page by page, and the story pulled me in without hullabaloo or fuss—this is good, confident storytelling.”—Aimee Bender
“...It will remain in your mind long after you’ve closed the book. Hope does spring eternal! I highly recommend this hauntingly wonderful book.”- Nancy Simpson-Brice, Book Vault
WILLIAM J. COBB
THE BIRD SAVIORS
When a dust storm engulfs her Colorado town and pink snow blankets the streets, a heartbreaking decision faces Ruby Cole, a girl who counts birds. She must either abandon her baby or give in to her father, whom she nicknames Lord God, and marry a man more than twice her age who already has two wives. She chooses to run, which sets in motion an interlocking series of actions and reactions, upending the lives of an equestrian police officer, pawnshop riffraff, a disabled war vet, Nuisance Animal destroyers, and a grieving ornithologist who is studying the decline of bird populations. All the while, a growing criminal enterprise moves from cattle rustling to kidnapping to hijacking fuel tankers and murder as events spin out of control in a world in which the social fabric and economic structures seem on the verge of falling apart.
Set in a time of economic turmoil, virus fears, climate change, fundamentalist cults and illegal immigrant hardship, The Bird Saviors is a visionary story of defiance, anger, compassion and unexpected love, in which a young woman ultimately struggles to free herself from her domineering father, to raise her daughter in the chaos of the New West, and to seize an opportunity to become something greater herself. In this brilliant new novel, William Cobb offers an elemental and timely vision of resilience and personal survival, but—most of all—of honest hope.
$25.95 / $26.95 CAN | Fiction Hardcover | 6x9 | 320 pages
June 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60953-070-9 | Carton Quantity: 24
EISBN: 978-1-60953-071-6
Lord God is talking again. He does love to hear himself speak. A graybeard loon, he sits hunched over the kitchen table, his arms sunburned, nose hooked, hair thin and wiry, ranting hoarse-voiced about sinners and Socialists. Out the foggy window Smoke Larks flutter liquid as living shadows to perch atop the woodshed. When they settle the morning sun backlights their black silhouettes like burnt figures on a woodcut.
Ruby shifts the baby girl in her lap and thinks of the birds, how they must be cold of a morning like this. She’s seen twelve this week whole. She counts the birds and invents her own names. She knows that people call them by another name, but she calls them Smoke Larks. Swirling in vast flocks in late winter, they look like smoke from a great fire, burnt souls twisting in the wind. Purple-black, dusky, and speckled, the short-tailed birds scatter among the twisted junipers in the back yard, pecking in the dry hay grass.
Ruby began counting all the birds two years before, when she noticed how quickly they seemed to be dwindling. They are disappearing and someone has to note this, to keep it in her mind if nowhere else. The going away of things has to be noted. Especially a thing as perfect as a bird, even the squawky Blackjacks, or an old Grief Bird with claws like voodoo earrings.
William J. Cobb is the author of a book of stories and two previous novels, including the critically acclaimed Goodnight, Texas. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and many other magazines. He has received numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, and the Sandstone Prize. He was raised in Texas and currently lives in Pennsylvania, where he teaches in the writing program at Penn State, and in Colorado.
Author photo by Elizabeth May.