BYRD

In this debut novel, 33-year-old Addie Lockwood gives birth to a son and surrenders him for adoption without telling his father, little imagining how the secret will shape their lives. Through letters and spare, precisely observed vignettes, BYRD explores a birth mother's coming to make and live with the most difficult, intimate, and far-reaching of choices.

Addie Lockwood believes in books. Roland Rhodes believes in blues guitar. Coming of age in the small-town South of the 1970s, they form a friendship as extraordinary as it is unlikely. They meet again in their disillusioned thirties, this time in California, where Roland's music career has landed him. Venice Beach is exotic, a world away from North Carolina and Addie's cloistered life as a bookstore clerk. Over a whirlwind New Year's weekend she falls in love with the place, if not with Roland. When she comes home pregnant, reality sets in. Conflicted, unready to be a mother, she gives birth to a son--Byrd--and surrenders him for adoption without telling Roland, and without imagining how the secret will shape their lives. Kim Church's stories and poetry have appeared in Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, the Norton anthology Flash Fiction Forward, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has received fiction fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband, artist Anthony Ulinski. Byrd is her first novel.