THE BOY WITH A BIRD IN HIS CHEST

A boy with a bird in his chest navigates all the perils of adolescence while learning to accept and celebrate his queerness.

Arriving during the yearly floods in Morning, Montana, Owen is born with a mysterious heart ailment. His mother, Janice, takes him home, expecting the worst. Instead, she awakens one morning to see a baby bird settled “inside the rib cage, next to his heart and lungs.” So begins Owen’s life as a boy with a secret, a boy who is kept inside by his mother, a boy with only the bird, Gail, for company. And so begins Lund's symbolic tale of growing up queer in the early 2000s. Isolated and hidden from the rest of the world for most of his childhood, Owen begins to long for companionship as he enters adolescence. But his mother's concern for his safety from "the Army of Acronyms" is warranted; when he enters a doctor's office in an emergency, the doctor calls him a "Terror," and Owen barely escapes. To protect her son, Janice takes him to live with her brother and his daughter, Tennessee. What follows is Owen’s coming-of-age story: his efforts to survive high school, his sexual awakening, and his growing pull toward water and the ocean. In a lovely piece of magical realism, Gail is physical proof of Owen’s difference from the people around him, but she also plays a parental role, offering advice and care. Owen's queerness is presented both as an essential piece of his identity from birth and as a piece of himself that he must keep secret. He struggles with self-confidence and belonging and with suicidal thoughts. Yet in the end, it is love that will save him—love, Gail, and the infinite beauty and power of the ocean. The novel follows the conventional structure of a bildungsroman, but the symbolism is decidedly unconventional. And while it takes a little while to sort out the layers of literal versus figurative meaning, the strangeness sets it apart from other coming-of-age stories.

Embrace magic and suspend your disbelief and this novel may just take you on a beautiful, necessary journey.