Wild Bird Audiobook

In her most incisive and insightful book yet, Wendelin Van Draanen, award-winning author of The Running Dream and Flipped, offers a remarkable portrait of a girl who has hit rock bottom but begins a climb back to herself at a wilderness survival camp in the desert.

3:47 a.m. That’s when they come for Wren Clemmens. She is hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who’ve gone so far off the rails and their parents don’t know what to do with them anymore. This is wilderness therapy camp. Eight weeks of survivalist camping in the desert. Eight weeks to turn your life around. Yeah, right.

The Wren who arrives in the Utah desert is angry and bitter and blaming everyone but herself. But angry can’t put up a tent. And bitter won’t start a fire. Wren’s going to have to admit she needs help if she’s going to survive.

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“Narrator Alex McKenna depicts the transformation of Wren Clemens…McKenna, nimbly navigating this complex protagonist, highlights Wren’s faults and strengths with tones of misery, regret, resilience, and grace. Wren comes to life as McKenna vocalizes the teenage girl’s search for the self she has left behind. With a cadence that follows the ever-changing pulse of Wren’s spirit, McKenna notes her subtlest shifts in mood in a captivating manner…The end of the story finds listeners falling in love with the heroine as McKenna’s last words reveal Wren as a girl who has finally found her true self. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

— AudioFile