From the author of the acclaimed The Curiosity comes a compelling and moving story of compassion, courage, and redemption.
Deborah Birch is a seasoned hospice nurse whose daily work requires courage and compassion. But her skills and experience are tested in new and dramatic ways when her easygoing husband, Michael, returns from his third deployment to Iraq haunted by nightmares, anxiety, and rage. She is determined to help him heal, and to restore the tender, loving marriage they once had.
At the same time, Deborah’s primary patient is Barclay Reed, a retired history professor and expert in the Pacific Theater of World War II whose career ended in academic scandal. Alone in the world, the embittered professor is dying. As Barclay begrudgingly comes to trust Deborah, he tells her stories from that long-ago war, which help her find a way to help her husband battle his demons.
Told with piercing empathy and heartbreaking realism, The Hummingbird is a masterful story of loving commitment, service to country, and absolution through wisdom and forgiveness.
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“Narrators Elyse Mirto and John H. Mayer add liveliness to Kiernan’s moving story about healing and redemption…Though the story is told from Deborah’s perspective, Mirto’s sensitive performance allows each character to grow in the listener’s imagination. Her low, almost husky voice reveals a wide range of feeling, from competence to desperation, from passion to fear. At the end of each chapter, Mayer enters to narrate a second, related story. While the connection takes a few chapters to become clear, once it does, Mayer’s baritone is a welcome addition.”
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