{"id":457446,"date":"2025-09-28T08:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T08:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457446\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T08:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T08:29:10","slug":"no-love-isnt-easy-but-shann-rays-where-blackbirds-fly-shows-that-it-is-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/457446\/","title":{"rendered":"No, love isn’t easy. But Shann Ray’s ‘Where Blackbirds Fly’ shows that it is possible."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As a clinical and systems psychologist, Shann Ray is well-versed in discussing the intricacies of romantic relationships. The 30-year Gonzaga University professor specializes in something called forgiveness studies<\/a>: the idea that the act of forgiving can reap rewards for your well-being.<\/p>\n

But Ray also knows true, mature love found in romantic relationships is extremely rare.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all suffer so much in love that it\u2019s hard to believe that it actually exists,\u201d Ray said.<\/p>\n

However, Ray knows it does. And that\u2019s why he wrote a book entirely devoted to it.<\/p>\n

Through five novellas, \u201cWhere Blackbirds Fly\u201d (released Oct. 1) dives deep into the lives of five couples and their commitment toward love, traversing generational trauma, genocide, infidelity, addiction, family patterns and psychological battles.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just wanted to get into our interior lives,\u201d Ray said, \u201cand notice that. Notice this desire for love and kind of follow people\u2019s quest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ray uses nature, often of the avian variety, to paint a landscape of feeling, where words may fall short. Ray centers his tales of restoration on the lives of Montana-born financial lender John Sender and his Puerto Rican partner Samantha Valeria Arrar\u00e1s. The pair fight for love over the span of time and space, beginning and ending in the vast wilderness of Montana.<\/p>\n

Inspired by the Beartooth Range and Yellowstone River near where Ray was raised, \u201cWhere Blackbirds Fly\u201d depicts Montana\u2019s high country, horseback riding, hunting and, as the title suggests, blackbirds. As a child, he often spotted red-winged blackbirds in flight and along the roadside.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that was an imprint, for sure, as a young person,\u201d said Ray, who began spotting blackbirds multiple times a day in Spokane as he began researching for and writing the book.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a great history of literary depth in Montana,\u201d said the \u201cAmerican Copper<\/a>\u201d and \u201cAmerican Masculine\u201d author, who found nature inspiration from Wallace Stegner, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, James Welch, Mildred Walker and Spokane Is Reading\u2019s 2024 author Debra Magpie Earling<\/a>, whom he calls a friend. \u201cAll of them do something unique and transcendent with wilderness as persona.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couples\u2019 backgrounds and cultures are wildly diverse themselves, as are their religious beliefs. Many times, the couples\u2019 commitment to one another falls short, but Ray offers them chances to come back together again and again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all have a capacity for great failure and we also all have a capacity for great repair and restoration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Beyond the novel\u2019s touch on love and the wild, there are bad players at hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a psychologist, I\u2019ve always also been fascinated with the full far end of the dark side of humanity, and I don\u2019t ignore that, because I feel like that\u2019s an expression of our humanity,\u201d Ray said. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of how the deepest part of the shadow of our humanity bites and kills. And since we hide our own shadow or ignore it or deny it, it rises up to harm us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The couples are faced with an antagonist and a cultural and political atmosphere not much different from our own: \u201cThe current atmosphere of money madness in America, media hatred, political sides in which it looks like it\u2019s OK to completely try to dominate, yell at, degrade and even kill each other, are the wrong direction in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the end, \u201cno one\u2019s free from harm,\u201d Ray says. Yet he finds a way for his couples to find love through it all \u2013 even if it\u2019s not a storybook ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want a work of art to point to love itself at the foundation of healing the age of enragement, the age of fracture, the age of fascism, which historically always cycles,\u201d Ray said. \u201cThere will be healing from this age right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

How? Ray answers: \u201cRadical revolutionary thought would say, sacrificial love is what changes the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Ray may know a thing or two, beyond his profession, about love and healing: Ray has been with his wife, Jenn, for 40 years. The pair raised daughters Natalya, Ariana and Isabella together, and he has written a book of poems devoted to her called \u201cSweetclover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Northwest Passages<\/a> will host Ray in conversation with Spokesman-Review managing editor Lindsey Treffry at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, at the Bing Crosby Theater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a clinical and systems psychologist, Shann Ray is well-versed in discussing the intricacies of romantic relationships. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-457446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115280987181544834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}